We love flowers so much we could just eat ’em! Every room in our home is laden with flowers: living, artificial, ceramic, painted … just a wide variety of flowery curiosities. But, as much as we love looking at flowers, we love eating them even more. We’ve researched the subject quite a bit: which are edible, how to grow them, how to harvest them, how to dry them, and, oh yeah, how to eat ’em up. One of our all time favorite ways to eat flowers is to crystalize them and use them as a garnish on desserts. We discovered our delight for sugared flowers several years ago when we had the honor of hosting a formal tea.
The local bakery boutique, Cakes By Request, made the most scrumptious lemon bars for the event, and since the tea theme was “celebration 
of spring,” we decided to adorn the bars with crystalized flowers. From our garden we picked lemon balm, violets, and dianthus, all edible and together, the perfect complimentary colors and flavors.
Our research suggested that we pick them early in the morning (for fullest color and flavor) and place them in a cold water bath to clean them.
We soaked the freshly clipped flower-heads and leaves for five minutes (we didn’t dare leave them in too long for fear of wilting). To clean them, we grasped each flower by the stem and shook it lightly under the water to free up any stubborn little critters — no ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ bug exhibitions allowed! Once they were clean, we placed them, flower side up, on a tea towel to dry.
Our ingredients and supplies:
1 Tablespoon Egg Replacer
1 1/2 Tablespoons Water
1/2 cup sugar
Coffee/herb grinder (we use a small Mr. Coffee grinder) Paint brush (1/8 to 1/4 inch wide brush head) Parchment paper
We started by grinding the sugar for 3 seconds. It doesn’t seem like much, but the sugar needs to be fine (not powdered, not large crystals, but somewhere in between), and about 3 seconds does the trick. We then filled a small bowl with the sugar.
Next, we laid out the parchment paper — just enough to hold all our sugared flowers.
Now the critical part: mixing and applying the “egg” solution. There were a lot of recipes that called for flaxseed and other ingredients as an egg replacer, but we decided to first try using an ingredient we were familiar with. The basic property needed is “starchiness,” typically provided by dried egg whites, but we were fairly confident that egg replacer would do the trick. We were right.
We combined the egg replacer with the water and mixed it throughly, looking for a consistency about like that of egg whites.
We dabbed our paintbrush in the egg replacer, then evenly coated each petal, one petal at a time, front and back (a delicate procedure). We were careful not to make the coat too thick or thin — too much, and it would glob up when we sprinkled on the sugar … too little, and the sugar wouldn’t adhere. Also, we had to make sure to get our brush way down in the center of the flower — every square centimeter needs to be coated.
The first flower went well. We held it over the sugar bowl and spooned the sugar all over, diligent to get it on every petal, and again, in the center. Finally, we held the flower, petals facing down, and lightly (very lightly) shook the excess sugar off. Repeating the process, we placed each finished flower on the parchment paper to dry, making sure no two flowers touched.
The most difficult part was the goopiness factor. Once the sugar mixed with the egg replacer on our hands, it became almost impossible to handle the paint brush and coat the next flower. We ended up washing and drying our hands after finishing each flower. It was cumbersome, but wow! It was worth it.
Note: after about 30 minutes, we gently nudged each flower (at least enough that we knew they weren’t stuck) so they wouldn’t dry too securely to the parchment. We nudged them once again about an hour later.
We continued this process for the lemon balm leaves (much easier than flowers).
In the evening, we covered the sheets of leaves and flowers with tea towels. It took about two to three days for all the flowers to thoroughly dry — they’re only fun when they’re crispy.
We are excited to report that our tea and our crystalized flowers were a success.
We hope we have inspired you to experiment with adapting recipes to suit your needs. Whether the project succeeds or not, it is valuable bonding time and there’s always a sweet ending.
In Kindness,
~Jnk