Sometimes an introduction is best done with a photo rather than words, and this is one of those times!
I recently made these edible flower lollipops for my mom for Mother’s Day, as my mom has a green thumb and loves flowers! She lives 3,000 miles away, but thankfully with modern day technology I was able to watch her open them via video chat. Needless to say, they were a hit!
The recipe I used came from this blog post at Sprinkle Bakes. Since this recipe is so quick to put together (the candy heats quickly and the candy cools just as quickly!) I wasn’t able to get any tutorial photos of my own.. thankfully she has a step by step photo tutorial on her blog already, and I highly recommend it!
If you have someone to assist you in making these, I’d recommend it – FYI, this isn’t really a kid friendly recipe due to the high temperature of the candy, but feel free to invite a crafty friend to come help! I encountered a little bit of trouble making these..
I think my first problem is that I was using a kitchen thermometer instead of a candy thermometer (my candy one kicked the bucket) and I accidentally let the mixture heat up to a couple of degrees hotter than it needed to be.. My candy mixture ended up cooling REALLY quickly! I’m pretty sure that it cooled faster than it would have, had I heated it to the correct lower temperature to begin with. Hotter heat = quicker cool down? Possibly. I’m not sure. I might try these again sometime and heat them to the correct temperature and see how much longer I can work with the candy before it hardens. I only was able to make 8 before the mixture hardened around my spoon!
The other problem, as you can see, is the air bubbles. When I stirred in my flavor oil and food coloring, the air bubbles did not all dissipate as the candy settled. I have a sneaky feeling that this was also due to the temperature of the mixture!
All things aside, I kind of prefer the organic shape of these pops versus a perfectly round circle, especially with the flower center.
The flowers I used came from my grocery store. They had a small selection of edible flowers near the fresh herbs. I chose to use all pansies for these, but you can use any flower that’s edible and pesticide free. Some of the flowers were a little bit too squished to use whole, so I used some of the petals in a couple of the pops. I think they’re just as pretty!
I packaged up the lollipops in tissue paper to match the card I was sending, and tied them up with one of the same purple ribbons used on the pops wrapping. The flower on top is a cardboard die-cut that I affixed with double stick tape. Pretty, no?
One of the great things about this recipe is that it all comes together fairly quickly, so you can make these in an afternoon and have them ready for gift-giving the next day! (Their cooling/hardening time will vary based on your climate. Mine were ready to handle within a few hours.)
Happy Mother’s Day!
Victoria Allison - Blog 