Four Ways to Preserve Edible Flowers

Edible flowers don’t last long, so you either need to use them fresh or preserve their beauty and flavor for later. Here are four ways to preserve edible flowers including how to make floral ice cubes and oil cubes, floral syrups and cordial, dry flowers, and beautiful crystallized edible flowers.

Popular in Victorian times, edible flowers are enjoying a massive comeback. They’re now almost commonplace as decorations for wedding cakes, beautiful salads, and fancy cocktails. If you grow herbs and flowers in your garden, you might even have some waiting to be picked and used right now. Nasturtiums, chive flowers, lavender, roses, and primrose are all edible and delicious. Using them fresh from the garden is usually what we do, but is there a way to preserve them? Let me show you the many ways you can preserve edible flowers so that you can enjoy them later in the year.

Picking Edible Flowers

Edible flowers range in flavor from lightly peppery calendula to cucumber-flavored borages. There are also mild-flavored flowers, such as primroses, and floral-flavored flowers, such as lavender and roses. When using edible flowers, and especially when you’re preserving them, begin with fresh flowers in their best condition. That means harvesting flowers in every season to use later for beautiful drinks and desserts.

When picking them fresh, aim to pick them in the late morning after the morning dew has dried off but before the sun gets too hot. Choose perfectly formed flowers and flower buds that haven’t been contaminated by garden chemicals (weed killer) or pet urine. After you pick them, place them in a basket and cover them with a cloth to protect them until it’s time to use them. This helps keep them from wilting.

Edible flowers are delicate things, so we don’t wash them before using them in food. Washing them can damage them, so choose flowers that already look clean. You may also want to consider leaving the flowers spread out on a cloth in the shade for thirty minutes before you begin using them. This gives time for tiny insects to escape. After that, refrigerate them and try to use or preserve them on the same day as picking.

Buying Edible Flowers

Many supermarkets now sell edible flowers, often as a seasonal product. In my local, they come in a beautiful assortment of blossoms displayed in clear plastic cases. These are fantastic to use but are often quite pricey. You can also find them available for sale directly from the farm. I ordered a selection once from a farm’s online shop. They arrived in the same clear plastic packaging but surrounded by cold packs and in a styrofoam container. It wasn’t the most eco-friendly of purchases, so I’ve committed to only buying local or growing my own.

When it comes to edible flowers from purchased bouquets and the garden center, please beware. Most are treated with pesticides to keep them safe from insects while they’re on sale. That makes them unsafe to eat. Avoid these plants if you’re looking for edible flowers – they’re not fit for consumption. Only use organically grown flowers in edible flower recipes, including those that could be growing in your garden right now. You can also buy selections of edible flowers from some supermarkets and specialty online suppliers. Here’s a list of some of the most common edible flowers that you can use.

List of Common Edible Flowers

• Angelica – celery-flavored
• Borage (Starflower) – cucumber flavored
• Burnet – lightly flavored like cucumber
• Calendula (pot marigold) – lightly peppery
• Carnation (Pink) – spicy and anise-like
• Chamomile – light apple flavor.

• Chives – onion flavor
• Cornflower (Bachelor’s Buttons) – slightly sweet to spicy
• Gladioli – lettuce flavor
• Hollyhock – no definable flavor
• Impatiens – no definable flavor
• Jasmine – sweet and floral

• Lavender – fragrant and floral
• Lilac – lemony and floral (can be bitter)
• Nasturtium – peppery
• Pansy – lightly sweet to tart
• Primrose – lightly sweet to no flavor
• Rose – sweet and aromatic. Use only the colored parts of the petals
• Runner and climbing beans – crisp and bean-like

• Scented Geraniums – faintly citrusy
• Snapdragon – no flavor to bitter
• Squash & pumpkin flowers – sweet and succulent
• Sunflower – may be slightly bitter but adds a lot of color
• Viola – similar to pansy
• Violet – sweet and floral

How to Preserve Edible Flowers

Flowers are fleeting, and some bloom for only a day before they begin fading away. That’s why edible flowers are such a luxury commodity – as fresh produce, they don’t last. Fortunately, there are four main ways to preserve edible flowers in case you want to have them later in the year.

The first way is to freeze them, the second is to dry them out, and the third is to crystallize them in sugar. The method you choose depends on what you want to use the flowers for. The main factor is whether you want to preserve their flavor or their looks.

How to Make Edible Flower Ice Cubes

This first way to preserve edible flowers is simple. If you do this when the flowers are at their best, they’ll last up to a year. Edible flower ice cubes are a beautiful way to decorate and even tint summery drinks, but the flowers can’t really be defrosted and used as floral decorations in food recipes. If you’re trying to preserve the flavor of edible flowers and are not bothered about how they look, you could freeze the flowers in olive oil to use in cooking. It’s a great idea for oniony chive blossoms.

Making edible flower ice cubes is easy. You’ll need an ice cube tray, fresh edible flowers, and water. Distilled water makes the clearest ice, but you can also use ordinary tap water. Despite what the internet says, using boiled water doesn’t make ice cubes clearer. To make floral ice cubes quickly, put the flowers in the cavities of an ice cube tray, fill them with water, and freeze them. The flowers will float to the top, though, and that might not be the effect you’re going for.

The trick to getting flowers to look like they’re suspended in ice is to first fill the ice cube tray a quarter full with water and freeze it. Then, place the flowers in each cube cavity, fill the water in the tray up to three-quarters, and freeze it again. Finish the ice cubes by filling them to the top with water and freezing a third time. Pop them out of the tray and store them in a freezer-proof bag or container for up to a year. I cover this project in my book, A Woman’s Garden.

Drying Edible Flowers

The second method for preserving edible flowers is also easy, but it’s not as aesthetic. Drying flowers can preserve their flavor and color but not their original shape. It’s best suited for making floral teas or dried flowers to use in cooking rather than for food decoration. That could mean drying lavender flowers to use in cookies or rose petals to use in tea. The objective of drying edible flowers is to remove all of the moisture from them. Do this, and the flowers have a shelf-life of up to a year. After they’re dried, you can infuse them in sugar, make floral tea, or use them to decorate and flavor baked goods.

There are many ways to dry edible flowers, and for single flowers you can use the same methods for drying mint. Some flowers can be dried in bunches that you suspend in a cool, dark place. That’s the case for lavender buds, which you dry before they begin opening. You can also use a food dehydrator or herb drying rack to dry flowers and flower petals. I use both for drying calendula flowers. When completely dry, store your flowers in an airtight container.

How to Make Floral Syrups

If you’re more concerned about the flavor of flowers, you can make gorgeous floral syrups and cordials. They’re very similar and preserve the flavor of elderflowers, roses, lilacs, violets, and more. Floral syrups are simple syrup that has floral essence in it. You usually create this infusion by making a simple sugar syrup, then pouring it over the edible flowers and leaving it for thirty minutes. Afterward, you strain it, bottle it, and water-bath the bottles.

Cordials can be made in a similar way but have lemon juice or citric acid. They’re also specifically for mixing drinks. Elderflower cordial is a staple in Britain, and you add it to still or sparkling water or something more adult to create a beautifully flavored and refreshing drink.

How to Crystallize Edible Flowers

The second way to preserve edible flowers is to crystallize them. Crystallizing edible flowers hearkens back to the Victorian era and involves painting clean, dry flowers in egg white and gently coating them in sugar. You then leave them to dry and harden for a couple of days and store them in an airtight container. You can crystallize or candy edible leaves, too, and the ones you see in the photo are peppermint leaves.

The flowers on the cake above are primrose, one of the first flowers to bloom in spring. They’re perfect for crystallizing because the petals are quite thin, their colors vibrant, and they’re a good size for dessert decorations. You can use the method below for almost any edible flower that has thin petals that are easy to paint, though. For those that have thicker petals or dense flowers, you could pluck individual petals and crystallize them instead. That works well in the case of rose petals, which may need more than a couple of days to fully dry out.

Once dried, crystallized edible flowers become sweet botanical artwork with a shelf-life of up to six months. After you make them, the flowers are hard and sugary, and the petals inside are fully dried. Crystallizing edible flowers dries and preserves the petals so that they don’t rot or decay if kept in a dry place. Think of them as dried flowers.

Egg White Safety and Salmonella

The traditional process of crystallization involves an egg white wash and a coat of sugar. Afterward, you let the flowers dry and use them without cooking. I’ve had some questions about the risk of salmonella, though, and it is a serious question. Salmonella is a type of food poisoning that results in some pretty nasty side effects. It’s rarely fatal (less than 1% chance), but it’s something to avoid if possible.

For the safest possible crystallized flowers, use pasteurized dried egg whites mixed with water. With actual eggs, avoid using dirty ones or those that have been washed prior to the day you’re using them. That doesn’t mean don’t use farm-fresh eggs that have a bit of muck on them. Just wash them right before you’re about to use them so that they’re clean for only a short time. Doing that reduces the chance of cross-contamination.

Why Use Unwashed Eggs?

Let me explain in more detail. Salmonella is never inside the egg initially – it enters the raw egg from contact with bacteria on the outside part of the shell. Salmonella bacteria can be in chicken poo, which is why cracking and using dirty eggs is a risk. The bacteria can spread to the egg white and yolk when you crack the egg open.

However, washing eggs before storing them removes the shell’s natural protective coating. This potentially allows any residual bacteria to penetrate the shell over the days and possibly weeks before you use them. One way to know if eggs have been washed is how they’re stored in the supermarket. If they’re not refrigerated, they’ve not been washed. If they are refrigerated, they probably have been washed.

Edible Flower Recipes

After you’ve made crystallized edible flowers, I have a few other recipes that you can try. You could make rosewater from garden roses to make Turkish delight, or try these ideas:

• How to Naturally Dye Eggs with Edible Flowers
• Lavender Honey Cookie Recipe
• Elderflower Cordial Recipe
• Calendula Funnel Cake Recipe