Edible Flowers for Winter Weddings

I love it when prospective brides phone up and say “I’ve been looking at your wonderful website (and it is!) and I’d like some edible flowers and floral salad for my wedding”.

My immediate response is usually something along the lines of “Marvellous, congratulations by the way, and what’s the date of your wedding?” If the response is anywhere between March and November then I will happy natter on about all the choices and flavours available.

If the answer is December, January or February then my heart does a little wobble.  Edible flowers for winter weddings…..hmmm.

We are officially closed at that time of year and are completely at the beck and call of the British weather. But this is tropical Devon and I know we should have something but I can make no guarantees. We are a small business, certified organic and take this seriously. We don’t therefore heat our polytunnels. What is in season is in season and that is that.

Salad wise we have a good selection in the tunnels but it is nice to add sprigs of sorrel, flat leaf parsley and the wide selection of mustards growing in the field. Flower wise it is all winter hardy varieties that are growing in the polytunnel – violas, calendulas, primulas and pansies and they start to flower when they are good and ready.

So that is what I say. I advise that we keep in touch and speak two weeks before the wedding by which time I will know exactly what we will have and in what quantities. And I keep everything crossed…. fingers, toes… you name it.

Winter floral salad from Maddocks Farm Organics.

This year we’re lucky…so far. Whilst a lot of the country is blanketed in snow we’ve got away with a few frosty nights and nothing worse. So this weekend’s West Country wedding will have floral salad and some extra edible flowers to garnish their buffet.  But next year….next week even….everything might be different.

Spicy flowering radish sprigs  make a lovely crunchy addition to the salad.

A selection of early edible flowers picked in January at Maddocks Farm Organics. 

 

 

Edible Flowers for Winter Weddings

Maddocks Farm Organics featured in West Country Wedding Food Trends.

Maddocks Farm Organics was delighted to be featured as one of the West Country’s Finest Food Producers in this latest trends for weddings guide.

This lovely wedding supplement, which featured Emily Harmston Cakes wonderful cake using our edible flowers, went out with issues of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset Life so will hopefully bring our lovely flowers to the attention of some lovely brides for 2015.

So pleased!

Maddocks Farm Organics featured in West Country Wedding Food Trends.

Rose Petal Syrup.

How to make Rose Petal Syrup

Rose Petal Syrup is incredibly easy to make and tastes simply wonderful.

I generally use white sugar for making my floral syrups but my lovely friend Margie from MadebyMargie gave me the following recipe which is far superior.

Recipe directly from Margie’s blog

I’ve used Agave instead of white sugar because it’s much better for you…and as an extra bonus, it’s even easier than using sugar!

To make the syrup:
equal quantities of Agave and water, 1 cup of each

3 roses, make sure they are organic and free from insecticides…order yours from Maddocks Farm Organics to get the most beautiful ones around.

Give your roses a little rinse and then add all three ingredients to a saucepan.  

Simmer gently for about 15 minutes, by which time it will look like this:

Turn off the heat and allow to cool. The longer you leave the rose petals in, the more intense the flavour of your syrup will be. After a couple of hours (or even overnight), strain the petals out and pop your syrup in a container where it will live happily in the fridge for a month or so.

This syrup is marvellous for drizzling over cakes and even more delicious splashed into a whole range of summer cocktails. How about with champagne?

Rose Petal Syrup.

Forget-me-not Cocktail

Ingredients:

1 oz Apple Schnapps

3/4 oz Cherry Brandy

1/4 oz of Kirschwasser Cherry Brandy

Who could resist a cocktail named after such a dainty wee flower and the fact that forget-me-nots are edible flowers means that this is a cocktail has my name on it.  Okay, okay - I know - most of them do have my name on them! 

Living in deepest darkest Devon I couldn't get hold of Kirchwasser Cherry Brandy so I used a full ounce of regular. I suspect that the Kirchwasser is a far more refined version and I have probably committed some cardinal sin but to my uninformed palate it tasted just fine. 

This drink can also be made longer and less potent with the addition of a long draught of cranberry or grape juice and some ice. Enjoy.

Spicy Flower Canapés

Ingredients

Fudges Fiery & Flavoursome Jalapeño Melts  - or similar spicy cheese biscuit

(I'm not on commission I just love them). 

A good quality goat's cheese - a log rather than a round one;

Homemade wild garlic, nasturtium and mustard pesto;

A selection of savoury and spicy edible flowers. Here we used wild garlic, spicy radish, rocket, cress and mustard flowers. 

Rocket flower

Slice your goats cheese into thin slices and add to the cheese biscuits.

Add a generous dollop (technical term) of homemade wild garlic pesto.

Scatter with a selection of savoury and spicy edible flowers - from your garden or from here. Buy savoury and spicy edible flowers

Mustard and wild garlic flowers

Radish flower

Rosemary Cake

This cake recipe is based on Nigella's Rosemary Rememberance Cake. Nigella made it in honour of her maternal grandmother who was called Rosemary. The sentiment behind this struck a real chord with me as my paternal grandmother cooked extensively with flowers when I was a growing up and she unwittingly became a real influence in my later career even though sadly she was no alive to see it.

The cake mix is made in two set parts and two optional extras. It does have a strong rosemary flavour as this is what I like but it can always be tamed by using less.

Oven gas mark 3/ 170º/325º

For the filling:
1 eating apple
2 spring rosemary
1 teaspoon of caster sugar
zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon of butter

For the cake batter:
225 grams butter
150grams of caster sugar
3 large eggs
300 grams plain sugar
2 teaspoons of baking powder.

My optional twist for the rosemary syrup:
2 sprigs of rosemary
50mls of golden caster sugar
50mls of water
grated zest of half a lemon

Cream Cheese Frosting should you want it:
100 grms of butter (at room temperature)
250 grms of cream cheese
100grms of icing sugar (sifted)


Method.

1) Peel, core and roughly chop the apple and put in a sauce pan with the other 'filling' ingredients. Cover the pan and cook on a low heat for 4-8 minutes until the apple is soft.

2) Leave to cool and then pull out the rosemary sprig when it is cold.

3) Put the filling in a food processor and blitz until smooth. Then add the cake batter ingredients and process to a smooth batter.

This recipe will make a cake perfect for a 1lb cake tin which has been buttered and lined. For the cake here, I doubled the ingredients and split them amongst three round cake tins. If cooking in a 1lb loaf tin then cook for approximately 50 minutes. If using round cake tins then it will take less time depending upon the diameter of your tins. The cake is cooked when it comes away a little from the edge of the tins and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

When Nigella makes her cake in a 1lb loaf tin she lays a long sprig of rosemary lengthways along the top of the cake for the oil to infuse as the cake cooks. For this more celebratory cake, I made a light rosemary/lemon sugar syrup  by gently heating 50mls of water with the sugar, lemon zest and rosemary sprigs until the sugar has disolved. I left this to cool and then fished out the rosemary. When the cakes were cold I pierced the sponges with a skewer and poured over the syrup to make a lovely moist fragrant sponge.

To make this celebratory cake, layer and cover with the cream cheese frosting as detailed above,   garnished with sprigs of rosemary and scattered with rosemary flowers.

Edible Flowers: Bellis Confetti for cocktails

Edible flowers make a lovely additions to cocktail glasses and none more so that bellis daisies. These little beauties are amongst the first edible flowers to appear in the Spring and continue to produce flowers for months to come. Their confetti like petals are very popular with the chef fraternity who love to sprinkle them on a range of sweet or savoury dishes.

To create a petal rim to your cocktail glass mix the petals with some caster sugar. About 1/3rd petals to 2/3rds sugar.

Turn your glass upside down and carefully dip the rim of your cocktail glass in a shallow dish or saucer of sugar syrup or cordial (we like elderflower). Lift it out and hold it there for a moment or two to ensure that the syrup has dripped off and is not going to run down the glass when you right it. Then carefully dip the glass into the petal/sugar mixture so that it sticks to the glass.  Shake off any surplus and right your glass.

One of the nice things about this recipe (yes I know I can only very loosely describe this as a recipe!) is that it can be done literally hours in advance and the petals will continue to look great.

If you are serving tequila then you could rub the rim of the glass with a squeeze of lime juice before dipping the glass in a mixture of salt and petals instead. 

Bling or Spring? Primrose Panatonne Pudding

Primrose Panatonne Pudding

I invented this pudding for three reasons. Firstly because today heralds the start of Spring and we should not let that go without a bit of a celebration. Secondly and on a practical note, I was given a large panatonne at Christmas and need to use it up and lastly and most importantly because I am a big, big fan of alliterations!

This is a huge pudding and will easily feed 14 +. It is hard to describe other than being the very best bits of the following - danish pastry; bread and butter pud; trifle; and a truly great gateaux. It needs a very sharp knife to cut and a spoon to eat.

Best bit of all is that (except for making the primrose curd) there is no cooking involved at all so it might be one for the kiddies to have a crack at for Mothers' Day! Although perhaps leave out the booze if you are going to let the children have a slice. 

Ingredients

1 kg panettone

6 tablespoons of summer dessert wine

3 tablespoons of elderflower cordial

Primrose curd (see recipe here )

(alternatively use lemon curd or double cream or both!)

Primrose or primula flowers

Decide at this stage if you are going to make the primrose curd or use regular lemon and prepare accordingly. 

Unwrap and place the panattone on it's side and depending upon how many you are feeding, or how greedy they are, or then slice four slices of about two inch in thickness.  

Place each of these on a layer of cling film. Mix the wine and cordial together and drizzle evenly over the slices. This combination is lovely and summerly and sets off the cake beautifully but if you could also use limoncello or sherry if you prefer – or just cordial if you’d rather avoid the booze. For the ‘lid’ or top of the pudding just turn the slice upside down (ie cut side up!) and then sprinkle with the last of the liquid. You don’t want to add so much that the outer crust gets soggy so use you judgement and add any surplus to the other layers or your glass.

Place your bottom layer of cake onto your serving dish and spread a generous dollop of primrose curd onto the surface and cover with the next layer of cake. You can add seasonal berries as you go if you wish but you might well loose the subtle floral flavour if you do so. You can also swirl layers of curd with double cream. (We are nothing if not flexible in our imaginations!). Alternately layer the curd and slices until you have reconstructed the panatonne.

From here it can go one of two ways.

Spring

Simple and spring like. At this point pop in the fridge until just before you plan to eat it when you should sprinkle with icing sugar and garnish with fresh edible primroses. It goes very nicely with a good dollop of icecream as well.

Alternatively…

Bling

Go mad and create an tribute fit for Flora the goddess of Spring. This cake is so bright you will definitely need the shades. 

Cream Cheese Icing.

200 grms of butter (room temperature)

500 grms of cream cheese

200 grms of icing sugar (sifted)

2 tsp vanilla extract.

Make the cream cheese icing by beating the butter until it is smooth and pale. Then whisk in the other ingredients until they are all incorporated. Don’t over work or it can split. Completely cover the outside of the panatonne either in a rustic fashion similar to rendering a wall or  by carefully piping it. No prizes for guessing which method I  adopted. Normally I would not suggest adding your flowers too early to a cake (the very last minute is best) but primulas are fairly robust (look at the early Spring weather they sometimes have to deal with) so in fact I added these whilst the icing was still soft and bunged the whole lot in the fridge. They looked just as good two days later when Mandy who works for me snuck the remainder of the pud in her handbag and rustled it home.

Which do you prefer? Spring or bling!

Edible Flowers for Summer Drinks & Wedding Cocktails

Whilst outside we are all starting to think about Christmas and the frost has finally reduced the last of the edible flowers to pulp, in my head I am planning the flowers that we are going to grow for next year and we already have three times the number of weddings in the 2014 order book than we had this year which is very exciting.

I'm not sure whether it is because the weather has been kinder to us this summer or whether is it because people are growing more adventurous about eating flowers but we've had a lot of flowers going out all over the country for cocktails and other summer drinks this year. We have edible flowers heading to London for the cocktail set; to smart catering companies for corporate events and weddings; to one of my favourite customers who is producing a cocktail book next year (but more on that later) and also directly to brides for their wedding drinks.

Maddocks Farm Organics edible flowers also appeared in cocktails on the sofa at RHS Chelsea Flower Show where they were enjoyed by Alan Titchmarsh and Joe Swift and in Lavender cocktails on  Sunday Brunch where they were tried by the lovely Simon Rimmer, Tim Lovejoy and their guest, Olympic Athlete,  Christine Ohuruogu.




My favourite wedding of 2013 was that of the lovely Carla and Nick . Carla's fabulous mum Marion and her partner Cliff have been working at Maddocks Farm Organics for nearly18 months under the WWOOFing scheme so they are very much part of the family and Carla and Nick's wedding was the first opportunity for Maddocks Farm Organics to grow traditional wedding flowers for Carla's bouquet and to decorate the venues instead of just the usual edible flowers - extremely nerve wracking stuff but the bride was extremely happy and Marion did a wonderful job of arranging everything.


 Edible Flowers in your Wedding Drinks

Edible flowers work brilliantly in Wedding drinks irrespective of whether your wedding is a formal ‘champagne all the way’ kind of do or whether you are casually pitching a teepee in the back garden and opting for the DIY route.

Edible flowers come in all shapes and sizes and add a wonderful sense of glamour and celebration to Weddings and other special occasions.  Pimms has long been associated with the beautiful blue stars of borage flowers and  tagetes work well citrus based drinks. Snapdragons are wonderful at ‘snapping’ onto the rim of glasses and work particularly well with very fizzy drinks such as champagne. A confetti of lovely petals will make any drink look appealing and brides should opt for smaller rather than larger blooms with drinks so that they compliment rather than compete with the drink.

As important as adding ‘class to the glass’ they can also make the poor drivers’ non-alcoholic offering a lot more interesting and appealing.  It’s lovely to be able to really push the boat out for the designated drivers and also for children by making lovely fruit based punches. To be fair over the past few years the quality of the ready made soft drinks that you can buy in the supermarkets has improved dramatically but there are also many recipes on-line for lovely non-alcoholic punches and cocktails and adding fresh herb, fruit and edible flowers transform these into something really special.

As well as using flowers whole to garnish drinks, petals can also be crushed with salt or sugar to coat the rim of glasses for cocktails. They then form little jewels of flavour and colour that are just stunning.

Edible flowers are also wonderful set in ice either on their own or with mint to add some lovely colour and flavour to drinks and these can be done well in advance to be added to the drinks at the last minute. It is worth noting that ice cubes don’t have to be made purely of water that just dilute the drinks as they melt. I had a wonderful Gin based cocktail a few weeks back which had ice cubes made from Elderflower Cordial that released its wonderful flavour and fragrance as it melted changing the drink from one thing to another. Lemon juice can be added along with the flowers or lime or ginger. It’s entirely up to you.

Thank you to our lovely real life bride Carla and her mother Marion for allowing the photos. All photos takes by Maddocks Farm Organics using our edible flowers which have also featured in cocktails at Chelsea Flower Show and on Channel 4s Sunday Brunch. Details of our edible flowers can be found at www. maddocksfarmorganics.co.uk .

You can order edible flowers for cocktails or drinks direct from our on line shop  www.maddocksfarmorganics.co.uk  - http://www.maddocksfarmorganics.co.uk/cocktail_box.html