The petals of pansies are edible. You can refine salads with fresh flowers. The candied flowers make your holiday cake an eye-catcher. The colorful flowers have a lot to offer not only as a decoration, but also in terms of taste.
Pansies are edible and a beautiful decoration for desserts and Co.
The flowers of all types of violets have a pleasant sweetness, with the sweet violet (lat. Viola odorata) having the finest aroma. This evergreen perennial is often found growing in gardens without being perceived as a proper garden plant with its inconspicuous violet blue flowers. It propagates by self-seeding and aerial runners. Common pansies and horned violets can be used as decorations and as ingredients in the kitchen.
Only use untreated flowers
You can use the blossoms of the pansies you have grown yourself in the preparation of meals without hesitation. With wild pansies, you should make sure that you do not pick them near busy roads, as there is a risk of fine dust and pollution. In the case of plants that have already been purchased, caution should be exercised when consuming fresh blossoms, since fertilizers or chemical pesticides are usually used during their cultivation.
Uses in the kitchen
The flowers intended for consumption should always be picked fresh, as they soon look wilted and quickly lose their aroma. The sensitive flowers should not be washed beforehand, so as not to become unsightly and to retain the sweet pollen. The delicious flowers can be used in the following ways:
- fresh on a salad or on desserts,
- as an edible decoration for soups and dishes,
- candied on cakes and desserts,
- dried or fresh as an ingredient in flower teas,
- for the production of jams and jellies,
- frozen in ice cubes for the preparation of cocktails,
- as a coloring ingredient in the production of liqueurs.
To candy, dip the flowers in a protein-water mixture and then dust them with powdered sugar. The flowers pretreated in this way are allowed to dry overnight or in the oven at about 50°C for about 2 hours.
tips and tricks
Many wild forms of the viola used to be medicinal plants. Even today, homeopathic healing effects are attributed to them in alternative medicine. Roots and seeds can have a laxative effect (also in cats) or cause nausea, but no parts of the pansy plant are poisonous.