Decorating and Baking with Edible Flowers and Herbs

December 02, 2021

Focaccia with veggies before baking

Colorful flowers are jewels for creating dazzling salads, memorable wedding cakes and spiffed-up cocktails. Depending on the season, you might find butterfly pea flowers, pansies, celosia, dianthus, marigolds, violas, sweet alyssum and borage in South Florida. You can also snip blooms from herbs that flower. Here are some tips for using edible flowers:

Know your flowers. Many flowers are not edible. Other might be treated with pesticides and other harmful sprays. The safest bet is to grow your own safely, or buy from local farmers who grow safe varieties. These farmers carry edible flowers:
Bee Heaven Farm – beeheavenfarm.com
Harpke Family Farms – harpkefamilyfarm.com
Little River Cooperative – littlerivercooperative.com
Paradise Farms – sacredspacemiami.com/pages/paradise-farms
Blue Horizon Farm – Find their dried butterfly pea flowers at the Palmetto Bay farmers market and the monthly Homestead market

Photo 1: Bee Heaven Farm sells edible flowers

Photo 2: Blue Horizon Farm sells dried butterfly pea flowers

You can also use flowers from your own edible herbs. Gently rinse flowers first and dry on a towel before using. Store in the fridge.

Flowers are perishable. If you’re using them as garnishes for cakes, desserts and boards, wait until the last minute to keep them fresh-looking.

Press them before baking. For cookies, like Flowery Shortbread, press flowers flat before baking by placing between two sheets of parchment and laying a heavy book or two on top for at least 30 minutes. At this point, you can place them carefully on top of your cookies and bake. This method gives you time to arrange your flowers, but their colors may change in the oven. Or place flowers on top of baked cookies the moment they’re out of the oven, gently pressing them into the cookie with your fingertips. The colors will be more vivid, but you have to work quickly with hot cookies to apply the flowers.

What else to do with edible flowers? Freeze them in ice cubes for punch and cocktails. Use pressed flowers to decorate pots of butter or rolls of herb butter.