Fancy Cocktails made Naturally - Flowers You Can Eat

There are heaps of ways to use edible flowers for drinks and cocktails, and its way easier than many people realise! Here’s how I found out, how easy it was to make fancy cocktails at home! Try it!

What You Can Learn Below:

Fancy Cocktails To Make at Home

After having a baby, I stopped going out in the evening with my friends, and whenever I did meet up with them it was a bit on the dull side. So I had the idea of treating ourselves to a private fancy cocktails afternoon before the kiddos came home from day care.

All I could find though, was a half empty bottle of gin that I wanted to brighten up and do something different with. But we had nothing at home, no cucumber, no maraschino not even a lemon to slice up!

But I do have a gorgeous edible flower garden which gave me the inspiration to use edible flowers to brighten up boring drinks!

How To Make a Fancy Gin Cocktail Using Edible Flowers

I picked a handful of wild mallow (Malva sylvestris), a stunning flower people often use to make tea, as it has medicinal benefits.

I just threw it into my gin bottle and watched the wonderful reaction!

The gin started slowly turning purple and after about an hour the mallow petals became transparent as the color leached into the gin. I fished the colourless petals out and Voila! fancy cocktails done!

And yes, this is how easy it was to turn a dusty half empty bottle of gin into colorful fancy cocktails!

How To Change the Color to a Pink Gin Cocktail

The real wow moment in my private fancy cocktails afternoon came when I topped up the glasses with tonic. This added acidity to the drink, and it immediately became an intense bright pink. The ladies obviously loved it.

They have had many fancy cocktails before but those were always artificially garnished or coloured. This was a fancy cocktail made naturally!

What I found the most extraordinary was that so few flowers were needed to produce such an intense color. And I just wondered why we buy all those fake-coloured gins nowadays, when we can do it naturally using edible flowers.

Try making a Butterfly Pea Flower Cocktail and you’ll find a similar process is also achieved with this flower

Synthetic Coloring of Gin

In today’s world we are surrounded by so many synthetic products that are over processed. In purchasing alcohol we’re not even able to make an informed decision as beverages are exempt from the law of having to show their ingredient list. They tell us what they want us to see and will hide what they don’t want us to see.

There are a few companies that do choose transparency. The lovely pink Beefeater gin for example, tells us the secret where the pretty colour comes from.

Allura red colorant aka FD&C Red No. 40 is manufactured by coupling diazotized 5-amino-4-methoxy-2-toluenesulfonic acid with 6-hydroxy-2-naphthalene sulfonic acid in an azo coupling reaction.

This compound is the number 1 red coloring agent used in the US. However, in Europe it is banned in food, and only allowed to colour alcoholic drinks.

Color Your Drinks Using Edible Flowers

Well, I guess it’s a no-brainer why I opt to use a handful of medicinal flowers instead, which bloom abundantly in my backyard. They are also a wonderful magnet for visiting busy bees.

I now grow Malva sylvestris on a larger scale on our family flower farm called Lioflor in Slovenia, just 500 metres from Italy.

All our flowers are grown organically, and we maintain strict eco-sustainable practices. Our farm is a beautiful haven providing a wonderful eco system for a range of flora and fauna. This includes deer, jackals, squirrels and hedgehogs which we value highly.

We specialize in freeze-dried flowers which we ship worldwide. Freeze drying preserves the colour and form of the flowers and makes the product ideal for shipping as it is light and non-perishable.

Check them out on instagram @lioflor_

About the Author

Eszter fell head over heels in love with edible flowers when she was backpacking in Australia.

It all started when she tried the nasturtiums that grew all over the place in Bicheno, Tasmania. She tossed them in her salad and was like, “whoa, this is amazing!” After that, she was totally hooked.

Eszter is now back home in Slovenia and has started her own flower farm. She grows an assortment of mini roses, sunflowers, mallow, dahlia, pansy, stock, and herb flowers.

You know that saying, “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”? Well, it’s totally true for Eszter now.

She started her own company called Lioflor that sells fresh flowers locally and also freeze-dries them for international shipping.