Ingredients
- 1 egg white
- superfine granulated sugar, available at grocery stores, or see recipe below*
- optional: 1 or 2 drops of vodka mixed with egg white to speed up drying
Tools:
- Small artists brush, bowl, waxed paper, mesh strainer
Gather the materials and tools, and pick your flowers early in the morning, when they're fresh and crisp. You can use pansies, lilacs, rose petals, violets, pinks and annual geranium flowers.
Beat egg white until it's frothy. Hold the flower stem and paint all of the petals completely with egg white.
Once the flower is painted, pick up a pinch of sugar in your fingers and sprinkle it on the back. Shake off the excess and snip off the stem, then lay the flower face up on the waxed paper, and sprinkle the front with sugar. After one batch of flowers is done, use the strainer to dust it with a second coating of sugar.
If it's not too humid, the flowers should dry overnight. You'll know they're dry when the petals are stiff and brittle to the touch.
Transfer the dry flowers to a plastic container lined with paper towels. To avoid crushing them, stack the flowers only 3 layers deep, separating each layer with paper towels. Place a tight lid on the container and you can keep the candied flowers up to a year in your freezer.
*Here’s how to make caster sugar:
1. For every 1 cup of caster sugar that your recipe calls for, add 1 cup plus two teaspoons of granulated sugar to a clean coffee or spice grinder, food processor, or blender.
2. Grind the granulated sugar for only a few seconds, until the sugar is finer in texture, but it is not fine enough to form a powder that starts to clump together.
3. For added precision, run your homemade caster sugar through a fine strainer before adding it to your recipe.
