Flowers You Can Eat

We once had a lovely Bearded Dragon living in our garden. (Bearded Dragons are a kind of spiky lizard.) This dragon was so tame I would hold out a dandelion flower and he would waddle up and gobble it up. There are some flowers that you can eat. It's fun to use them in cooking and they look so pretty, but PLEASE do not experiment with flowers other than the ones mentioned here because many common garden flowers are poisonous.

image source

Flowers to Eat

1. Borage, violets, nasturtiums, and scented geranium are flowers that you can safely eat. Flowers of cooking herbs are also safe to eat.

2. Coloured flowers are very nice in salads. Try some nasturtium and borage flowers. It's also fun to sip the nectar from nasturtium flowers. (Make sure there aren't any bugs inside first! Yicky!!)

3. Crystallising flowers is easy to do. You will need a new fine paintbrush, an egg white, some caster sugar, some non-stick baking paper and a rack or cake cooler to dry the flowers on.

4. Violets and geranium flowers (especially lemon, rose or cinnamon scented ones) crystallise particularly well. Pick them early in the day, wash them, then stand the stems in a small jar of water until the flower parts are quite dry.

5. Beat the egg white very lightly, then, using the paint-brush, carefully paint every surface of the flower with the egg white. Make sure every bit is covered.

6. Sprinkle the caster sugar lightly over the flowers until all surfaces are well-coated, then put them on the rack to dry. Drying may take a couple of days. (Don't do it in wet weather or they 'll go sticky.)

7. Store the candied flowers in an airtight container. They can be eaten as sweets and make great decorations on ice creams, on sundaes and on cakes.