#sugared violets

Last week, as you'll know from my instagram feed, I went to the community garden to pick violets with my friend Hedvig, the sole intention being to coat them in sugar and use them in the kitchen. There was such a variety of colour and size that I think in actual fact we picked a mix of violas, violets and pansies. 

Eating the flowers straight from the garden was a strange experience. Imagining a sweet, parma violet-like taste, I was surprised at the somewhat medicinal flavour, Yes, it was a bit like eating germoline. But once coated with sugar and a touch of vanilla essence, they are much tastier.

It's easy to pick the flowers by hand, just make sure you pick the stems as long as you can which will come in handy for dunking them into syrup and sugar when you get home. 

The flowers will quickly wilt but will last for days if you just pop them into a bowl of cold water. For best results, it's worth coating them in sugar as soon as you get them home though.

You will need water, caster sugar, vanilla essence, a small clean paintbrush and some baking paper.  

I mixed up a sugar syrup using a cup of sugar, a cup of water and a drop of vanilla essence then heated it until the sugar had melted.

Pour a generous amount of caster sugar into a bowl ready to coat your flowers.

When the syrup has slightly cooled you can dunk your first flower into it, holding onto the long stem. Use the paintbrush to make sure the flower is entirely coated and leave it there for a few seconds. Once you have removed it, time is of the essence, hold the syrupy flower over your bowl of caster sugar and use a spoon to sprinkle sugar over each side of the flower. I tried dipping the flowers into the sugar but found that they lost their shape and gathered clumps of sugar instead of the delicate dusting I was going for. 

Place your flower onto your baking parchment. 

Carry on with the rest of your flowers but do be aware of the following:

1) it's messy. You will not believe how quickly you get coated in sugar. 

2) you will get some of the flowers wrong so always pick slightly more than you need. 

3) it takes ages, as you need to be very gentle. It's a lot of fun for the first 2 hours, slightly less after that.  

4) It's a bit boring after a while so best to get a friend involved. 

5) If you're planning to blog about it, you definitely need a friend to take pictures. Sugar syrup and expensive cameras should never be mixed (hence the limited number of pics here). 

But that said, it's an extremely worthwhile pursuit when you see the result after leaving your flowers to dry for about 48 hours. They're beautiful. 

If you fancy trying a slightly different method, Gardenista show you how to sugar violets using egg whites and while you're there, have a read of this pretty post on pressing pansies. Also, Lavender & Lovage share a recipe for violet syrup which you can use in your baking as well.