Making crystallized flowers is easier than you may think. Read on to find out how to make those stunning edible garnishes.
LC How Does Your Garden Grow? Note
A few more words from the author for those home gardeners (or aspiring home gardeners) regarding growing these petite pretties yourself. “Flowers like these are lovely grown in the kitchen garden for a decorative effect among your edibles. They like full sun and free-draining soil and, for best results, trim any faded flowers and feed with a complete plant food every 12 weeks or so. Flowers are best eaten or crystallized immediately after being picked.” There you have it. Can’t you just imagine these little lovelies strewn across a coconut layer cake or a chocolate tart?!
Raw Egg Caution
As with any recipe that relies on raw eggs, these crystallized flowers should be avoided by pregnant women, the very young, the elderly, the ill, and those with compromised immune systems. Here’s more useful egg safety information.
Crystallized Flowers
Special Equipment: A small, clean, new paintbrush
Ingredients
Directions
Line a wire rack with parchment paper.
Whisk together the egg white and water until just foamy. Holding a flower by the stem or stem end in one hand and the new, small, clean paintbrush in the other hand, gently brush the flower all over with the egg white mixture. (Be certain to lightly coat each speck of each flower or the uncoated bloom will wilt and wither.) Carefully sprinkle the sugar evenly over both sides of the flower. Place on the paper-lined rack and repeat with the remaining flowers.
Set the flowers aside at cool, dry room temperature for 12 to 36 hours, or until dried. Strew the crystallized flowers over cakes and other desserts and get ready for some oohs and aahs. (You can store the flowers in a single layer in an airtight container for up to several months if kept in a cool, dry climate.)
T-Shirt Variation: Candied Raisins
One of our recipe testers discovered something brilliant when she had a little egg white mixture left over after painting flowers. Loath to waste food, she decided to try to recreate the beloved sugared raisins found in Kellogg’s Raisin Bran following the instructions above exactly but using raisins in place of flowers. It worked spectacularly well.
Recipe Testers Reviews
My husband's birthday was coming up and he'd requested the Tres Leches ("Three Milks Cake") on this site. The cake tastes amazing, but isn't anything special to look at, so I was so excited when these flowers came out great. They made a very white dessert lovely and colorful. But I decided to make the flowers before we left on vacation, so they would be ready when we returned. The process took a lot more time than I expected. I do have a bit of a perfectionist personality and was trying to do a really nice job, but 30 minutes into the process I had completely only 5 flowers. I decided to move much more quickly on the rest of the flowers and not worry about getting every little area covered with egg white. This turned out to be a huge mistake. The flowers were dry the next day, but when we returned at the end of the week, the areas that weren't coated and crystallized had turned brown but the ones that I took the time to make sure I evenly coated with egg white were still perfect. So make sure you coat and sugar the blossoms everywhere. I doubled the egg white mixture because I wasn't sure how many flowers I could make, and even after brushing 24 flowers, I had a lot left. I thought about throwing it away but decided to try to recreate something I love—the raisins in Raisin Bran cereal. I coated a handful of raisins with the egg white mixture—not painting them but instead just tossing them in the egg white. I let them drain a little in a mesh strainer and then tossed them with some superfine sugar mixed with a little cinnamon. When they dried, they were amazing. I will definitely make both the crystallized flowers and the raisins again.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #LeitesCulinaria. We'd love to see your creations on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Melissa Maedgen
I think there are two kinds of cooks—the sort who will make candied flowers and then use them to decorate beautiful cakes, and the type who won't. I'm firmly in the second camp. I've never shied away from involved preparations, but I'm just not the kind of person with the patience to carefully paint egg white on a flower petal. That said, this recipe works perfectly, and it really does preserve the flowers for some time. I used nasturtium leaves, and I'll admit I only did a few because this is not my thing. There simply is no quick way to brush egg on a flower. But I painted, dried, and stored them, and I've been checking on them over the past 2 weeks, and they are holding up beautifully. This is a great thing to do if you buy more edible flowers than you need or if you want to preserve some flowers from your garden for holiday baking in the winter. They are beautiful and taste a lot better than the sugary decorations you might buy at a store. If you're a calm, patient sort of person and want the prettiest cakes and cupcakes imaginable, this recipe is for you.