I love flowers and I love good food, so today let’s bring them together for some great culinary fun!
If you look back in history there is plenty of evidence to show that people used flowers in cooking to a much greater extent than they do today. Medieval recipes often included flowers, particularly in salads and desserts. From cowslips to daisies, snowdrops to violets, they were all used. Read more about medieval flowers.
Moving back to the present day’s ‘palate’ for food, it is possible to integrate flowers in many recipes either as an ingredient or as a theme – from ice cream to cup cakes and cookies!
Ice cream & flowers
Flowers and ice cream make for a great match. Using flowers as an ice cream ingredient is nothing unusual; in fact one of my favorite ice cream flavors is violet ice cream. Elderflower, lavender, rose petal and orange flower are also becoming more widely used in ice cream making. Fun with ice cream and flowers doesn’t end there though! How about an ice cream sculpture of flowers?
This bouquet of ice cream roses was not that difficult to make – just drag your ice cream scoop across the top of a tub of ice cream to get a wonderful curl effect!
Cupcakes & flowers
Fashions in food will always come and go, but I find cupcakes to be a ‘perennial’ (pardon the pun!) favorite amongst my friends and family.
More than anything, cupcakes are a great ‘fun food’ because they offer so much scope for creativity; you can vary the color, flavor and theme almost as much as with ice cream. Here are 2 recipes for cupcakes with a flower theme:
Holiday Treats – Flower Cupcakes
Desserts – Hello Flower! Cupcakes
Cakes and flowers
If you want something a little more elaborate then this flower cake and cookies recipe is a must to try!
Once you have finished in the kitchen and prepared your chosen flower themed dessert, you might just want to take time out to appreciate the real thing. Of course, real flowers are best appreciated growing in the garden or a city park, but the next best thing is to have freshly cut flowers. Here’s a great article on how to cut, arrange and preserve fresh flowers.
So here we are now into October – what are the flowers associated with this month? I didn’t know until I started writing this post! According to Wikipedia they are marigold, hops and calendula. Now there’s “food for thought” for even more unusual recipes perhaps!
