Since I don’t have a garden where I can grow flowers without the use of pesticides, I go to pick them in the countryside.
I picked mauve flowers, with lilac corollas, open and cheerful; the beautiful blue stars of borage; the red poppies. Marigolds, acacia flowers and many others are also edible.
Crystallizing wild flowers is a bit more difficult, because they are very delicate: they break or lose shape easily.
How you do it? It takes patience and light and skilled hands.
It takes a lightly whipped egg white.
You have to wet the flowers, without soaking them too much, with the help of tweezers. Then you have to pass them in granulated sugar. Very delicately, even more so than in the first operation. The sugar weighs them down and the petals bend and lose their shape.
They lie on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or baking paper. That’s all.
Now the wait begins. Two days, maybe three. It depends on the humidity of the air.
This is what the flowers look like after 2 days: they have hardened and changed color. They are still beautiful and decorative.
I simply placed them on shortcrust cakes with custard and strawberries.
Custard is really easy. I explain it here:
https://www.facebook.com/gigliocooking.school.florence/videos/508842240245548
After the video …. I enjoyed them.
Marcella Ansaldo ©