Edible flowers add colour and flavour to food, and even beneficial compounds that can support your health.
One of the easiest ways to make use of edible flowers is to use them to decorate cakes, biscuits and puddings. Should you want to grow your own cake-decorating flowerbed, here are some of the best edible flowers to add colour and flavour to your garden and baking alike.
6 edible flowers
Primrose flower
One of the first flowers to bloom in spring, primroses are easy to grow. Plant a clump in a well-drained, sheltered bed and they’ll spread over the years, providing an abundance of buttery tasting flowers, with a hint of apple, to decorate cakes, meringues and lace though cream.
Sweet violets
While all violas are edible and very pretty, sweet violets (Viola oderata) are both a visual and flavour treat. Full of parma violet flavour, infusing a couple of handfuls of violets into sugar and water gives you a tasty syrup to drizzle on cakes, along with sticky flowers to use as a garnish.
Rose
Gather rose petals in the morning before the heat of the sun has burnt off their delicious oils. Snip off the bitter ends of the petals to get the sweetest flavour. You can use the petals fresh or dried; dried rose petals ground into powder make a delicious rose-flavoured food colouring for batters and icing.
- Cinnamon and rose shortbread recipe
- Wild roses and rosehips guide: how to identify, and how to make rosehip syrup
Marigold
There are two types of plants called marigolds: calendulas and tagetes. Both often grown as companion plants in veg gardens, calendulas and many tagetes marigolds can also be eaten. The flowers add a spicy, earthy flavour to bakes; the dried petals are more subtly coloured and are lovely scattered over carrot cake frosting
Peony
Blousy peonies have floral, slightly bitter flavours that make them the perfect balance for cream-filled cakes and puddings. Simply place atop a cake or cook into a bittersweet floral jam. Try stirring a spoonful of dried ground flowers into sweet treats such as homemade fudge and it’ll make them less cloying and more creamy.
Thistle
Allowing a few thistles to flower and go to seed in your garden will provide a valuable nectar source for pollinators and food for birds too. As a reward, you’ll have a harvest of flowers that taste of sweet honey. Cut off the flower head with scissors (or you’ll pull out fluffy choke-like hairs from the flower base) and scatter on baking for a wild treat
