Edible Flowers - A Great Way to Dress it Up

We've all seen it before, a flower on your plate as a fancy garnish. But do we ever think about actually eating flowers? My friend Nicole's birthday is coming up and I drew her name in our office birthday pool for a treat to bring in. I thought about all these extravagant things I could do, but in the end, I really wanted to make her a cake with Fluffy White Frosting. I was thinking of doing a lemon curd in the middle of white cake and adding lemon zest to the frosting, but Nicole chose chocolate, which I was craving anyway. I used *gasp* cake mix and just added some chocolate chips for and extra pop of chocolate. I almost added chocolate syrup, but decided to keep my cravings out of Nicole's birthday cake.
I'm not quite sure when it hit me. I guess I was pondering how to decorate the thing. I've never been good with piping, and I really wanted something springy. Since I couldn't make frosting flowers, and I'm not quite sure fluffy white would've held the heavier flower frosting, I came to the conclusion to use real flowers. I didn't want flowers you would have to eat around and pick off, so I decided to research edible flowers.
I was surprised to find that many well known breeds of flowers are actually edible. I found this great website that lists some edible flowers as well as their flavors and what they are paired best with. I don't know much about flower breeds, but I knew I wanted some spring-like colors like purples, blues, and yellows. I was at a loss on where to find such things in a small town like mine. Then a friend called me and told me that a local nursery just got some pansies in, and pansies are indeed on the list. Perfect! I stopped by the nursery and found many of the varieties listed on the site. I decided to go with violas, which are like miniature pansies, because they came in many colors in one pack. (And I didn't need an entire flat).

These beautiful little miniature flowers made my presentations beautiful, and they did all the work. It really was a nice and easy way to decorate a cake. Violas really have no flavor, and are mostly for looks. Another application I saw that was beautiful was flowered water. The wedding shower hostess used a large glass pitcher that had a tap at the bottom and she floated violas and violets in the water and it was beautiful and appetizing.

Stay tuned, I'd like to try my hand at sugared violets in the near future.

The yellow and purple one is my favorite!