Though our summer in Berlin was a bit rough, spring was beautiful, and early on I got a LOT of pansies in my garden. Whenever I have that many flowers, I always feel I have to do something with them. I had already pressed a few, and eaten a lot of salads garnished with flowers (pansies are edible and quite tasty), but I figured there was something else I could do with these edible flowers. I stumbled upon (literally…I love StumbleUpon) a handy tutorial on using candied edible flowers in baking, and voila! I came up with cupcakes with lovely floral (and edible) decorations! The cupcakes themselves were flavoured with strawberries and fresh mint, and the icing is strawberry butter cream.

Before I post pics, here is the page with the instructions on how to make the flowers. It was quite time-consuming, but they keep for a while so it’s worth it to do lots at once: http://homecooking.about.com/od/dessertrecipes/r/blmisc69.htm

Pictures:

If you want to use the same cupcake recipe I did, you can find it here: http://redsie05.blogspot.com/2010/07/strawberry-season.html

For icing I just used a basic butter cream, and threw in some blended strawberries and a bit of vanilla!