Edible flower books

Feb 11, 2017 | Books

I’m sometimes asked for ideas on how to use flowers in food and drinks, so I thought it would be useful to share a few great books about choosing and cooking with edible flowers.

Cooking with Flowers by Miche Bacher

Cooking with Flowers by Miche Bacher

This is a proper cook book, with stunning photographs and absolutely loads of sweet and savoury edible flower recipes. Each section has an introductory description of the flower, its background and seasonality and, really usefully, measurements (e.g. x number of petals = 1 cup).  What I really like about this book, aside from how damn pretty it is, is that the dishes vary in level of difficulty and complexity. There’s a recipe for simple pansy pancakes, if you don’t want to get too involved but still want to make something that will look beautiful on a plate and there’s goats cheese nasturium ice cream for more fancy pants cooks.

More about Cooking with Flowers


The Herb & Flower Cookbook by Pip McCormac

The Herb & Flower Cookbook by Pip McCormac

This is another one with really gorgeous photos and lots of recipes which are handily organised into types of meals (breakfast, sides, lunch etc). For anyone new to using herbs and flowers the thesaurus at the beginning of the book is great, giving a run down on flavour, when to pick and what foods to use them with. It also includes sowing and planting guides. There do seem to be more recipes for using herb leaves than edible flowers but the flower recipes are particularly appetising. How lovely does honeysuckle and blackberry cheesecake sound?

More about The Herb & Flower Cookbook


The Edible Flower Garden by Kathy Brown

The Edible Flower Garden by Kathy Brown

If you search online for Kathy Brown and her beautiful edible flower garden in Bedford you’ll find she runs group visits in the summer with demonstrations and a floral afternoon tea. That’s definitely on my list of places to go! This book is a little different from the previous two because it goes into more about gardening flowers as well as cooking with them. It includes an interesting background to the use of edible flowers throughout history and around the world as well as a very valuable guide on gathering and preparing flowers to eat. The recipes are super easy and I would say this makes a great introductory book into the world of growing and creating floral food.

More about The Edible Flower Garden


The Garden Forager by Adele Nozedar

The Garden Forager by Adele Nozedar

This book is like the most beautiful floral encyclopedia you’ve ever seen. The images of the plants and flowers are all illustrated rather than photographed, detailing petals, leaves, stems and fruit. Horticulturalists can enjoy getting geeky about the detailed descriptions of the origins of the plants, their names, where they grow and their medicinal as well as culinary uses. Cooks can learn about using flowers and plants they may not have tried before and make delicious things with hop petals or juneberries. This definitely goes beyond the regular edible flowers we know well and you’ll probably learn lots of new things too.

More about The Garden Forager


Eat Your Roses by Denise Schreiber

Eat Your Roses by Denise Schreiber

This little trickster of a book isn’t just about eating roses, it has fifty-ish other flowers in it too. I think of this as a really quick little reference guide with one page for each flower showing a photo, description, uses and anything else of particular interest. This is a good starter book that can help you decide which flowers you’d like to use with some sweet and savoury recipes at the end to get you started.

More about Eat Your Roses

More Articles

The power of ‘It’s okay’

After an upsetting event the two words "It's okay" can offer much comfort. I've been the recipient of this easement, both at times of true distress and more trivial troubles. I've found myself saying it to others when wordier expressions would fail. And although the...

Winter solstice

The shortest day, the day that offers us the least light of all of the days of the year is today. On this, the astronomical beginning of winter, there is more darkness across the hours but this December 21st showed me remarkable light, no matter how brief. It felt...

The grey of the slate and of the mountains in the haze

The grey of the slate and of the mountains in the haze and of the stratocumulus filled sky is a far cry from the grey of the roads and of the walls and dusty windows of abandoned buildings. Three days in the grey (and green and blue) of North Wales quietened my mind....

Handfuls of sweet peas for Great Uncle Bill

July brought handful after handful of sweet peas. A handful is the number of times I ever met my Great Uncle Bill. A handful is the number of garden tools of his that I now own. Even though in person Bill wasn’t a regular or considerable part of my life, he certainly...

Unearthed by Claire Ratinon

The timing of reading Unearthed by Claire Ratinon was significant for me and I will explain why later. It strongly articulates why representation in nature writing is so important. Claire did this beautifully and so cleverly against a phenomena that we experienced...

Chamomile, before the tea

Once you invite chamomile in, it becomes a faithful friend. Returning year after year, at first almost undetected as their tiny seeds nestle between the soil particles and the little plants volunteer their services around the site where their mother once stood. I...

The Garden Cure by Jan Cameron

The Grow Create Joy book club is back and I'm picking up from where I left off with The Garden Cure by Jan Cameron. The Garden Cure is a guide to cultivating wellness, for ones self or for others, using the garden. Jan has many years experience working in community...

The chameleon and the crown

Goodbye to October, the chameleon and the crown of the season. A month when we can nostalgically forget the dark, rainy days and delight in the life-giving glow of decay. It’s no coincidence that this beginning of the end sparks inspiration, a time to wonder who we...

How my garden holds me

The motif of this summer was intense heat and more intense work schedules. A garden participant said to me in one session “how lucky you are to work in this calming garden”. I agree, I am. When I am at either of the gardens I work at I feel incredibly privileged. In...

The gentle flow of flower pressing

Sometimes, when our heads are full of thoughts and concerns, we need more than a passive activity to distract us. But worries are tiring and can leave us too exhausted to do anything energetic in the garden. The gentle flow of flower pressing has all the qualities...