This blog is on making crystallised edible flowers. Awhile back I wrote a post on Using edible flowers . Recently I have learn how to sugar (crystallise) edible flowers. It is an old Victorian art and it takes sometime to perfect it. This is because different types of flowers behave differently.

Making sugared edible flowers is fairly straight forward process. However as I said once the flowers soak up the egg white. The petals behave differently as they get soak up and can get soggy and mush. Especially violas, not so much strong structure flowers like dendrobium orchids. The orchids stay as strong like a boat going thru the thunderstorm.

The ingredients for making crystallised edible flowers are:

Edible flowers (a selection of) I wouldn’t recommend shop bought ones as they may have presticide and presevatives spray on them. Always use homegrown ones.

One Egg yolk or white egg powder (you can get them in big leading supermarkets)

Icing sugar (quantity depends on how many flowers one has and how big are the flowers)

Small paint brush dedicated just for food

Method:

Make sure the flowers are clean and dry and free from soil.

Whisk the egg white to break the albumin down.

Then start painting the flowers. Even in hidden corners like in between petals so that the icing sugar get to stick on them. In delicate flower petals like viola go easy on the amount of egg white mixture you put on it. Otherwise it will be like a sinking dinghy that you can’t rescue anymore. Trust me I been there and done that as well. It takes a bit of practice. A tip I found is that if the flowers still stay standing up after painted with egg white simply means that not too egg white wash. Less is more.

Then slowly sprinkle the icing sugar on top. In a few hours you will see the edible  flowers begins to crystallize. Leave them on side and let it to set overnight. On a non stick malleable surface like grease proof paper. As once it’s dry and set the sugared flowers become thin, fragile and break easily.