Guide to Making Crystallized Flowers for Cakes
Making crystallized flowers for cakes is a simple and effective way to turn small simple flowers and petals into tasty, sweet additions to your cake decorations. It is also a really easy way of preserving edible flowers for cakes so that they last a bit longer.
Here’s a quick easy guide to show you how simple this technique is to do at home.
How Easy Is It to Make Crystallized Flowers for Cakes?
Making crystallized flowers is both easy and fascinating. You’ll be coating fresh, edible flowers with a bit of egg white and then giving them a light dusting of sugar. It really is that simple! This easy process will give the petals a beautiful, crystallized look, while adding a crunchy sweet texture to your cakes or desserts.
Choosing the Right Flowers
Firstly make sure to pick flowers that are edible and have been organically grown. Then we need to pick the best type of flowers for crystallisation.
Not all flowers are good for crystallization and the smaller ones are definitely better. Also the simpler the petal formation the easier they are to crystallize. Flowers like violets, violas, pansies, primulas, pentas, borage and dianthus all do really well.
Larger petals such as rose petals are often used with the flat surface easily taking on the crystallization process.
Preparing Your Flowers
Only choose flowers that are in their prime and without any damage, then prepare your edible flowers by making sure they are dry and free from any dirt. I suggest you don’t need to wash them as you will damage the delicate petals, just brush off any small dirt particle with a little paintbrush.
Take off any stems or leaves, leaving just the flower head or petals.
Preparing Your Ingredients and Utensils
The only utensils you’ll need are:
- a small artist’s paintbrush
- a pair of tweezers for holding your small flower (although this is optional)
- drying rack or tray lined with parchment paper to place your crystallised flowers to dry
The only ingredients you’ll need are:
- an egg white, lightly beaten with a fork so its light but not foamy.
- caster sugar, or fine white sugar, in a shallow bowl suitable for dipping
4 Easy Steps for Making Crystallized Flowers for Cakes
Coating with Egg White
- Pick up a flower with your tweezers and gently coat the petals with egg white. You can do this by stroking the petals with your fingers although you will find it is more effective to use your small artists paintbrush.
- Make sure the petals or flowerhead are covered with a thin coating of egg white on all sides.
- If the coating is too thick this will result in too much sugar attaching itself and the flowers won’t look so dainty and appealing.
- If you find that the coating is too thick, just gently stroke the excess egg white off with your fingers
Adding the Sugar Coating
- Lay the coated flower onto the bed of sugar and gently sprinkle with a dusting of sugar so that the whole flower has a coating of sugar.
- Make sure that you completely cover the nooks and crannies of the flowerhead with sugar
Top Tip:
It might be tempting to dip your flowers into the egg white and then dip them into the sugar, but although this may seem a quick solution, your flowers will turn out with clumping of sugar. This will not be as pretty as doing it the slightly slower way, and also the crystalized flowers will take a lot longer to dry.
Drying Your Crystallized Flowers
- Place the flowers on the parchment or wax paper to dry and place them in a cool dry place.
- This will take around 24 hours depending on the thickness of the egg white and sugar coating and the drying environment
- Your crystallized flowers should be crisp when completely dry and ready either for use or storage.
Storing Your Crystallized Flowers
- When your flowers are completely dry store them place between layers of parchment paper in a dry, cool air tight container. Please make sure that they are totally dry or else they will go mouldy.
Now that you know how to make crystallized flowers for cakes, why not give it a try?
It’s simple and easy to do in your kitchen and a great activity to do with kids. They will love the crispy sweet little flowers. They might just not make it onto your cake!
