Tree Hugging Family » Candied Flowers

11 great ways to show the earth some good lovin’ this Valentine’s Day

Jennifer — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:34:13 +0000

Join the Our One Heart contest for a chance to win a $350 Romantic Package for 2: A little bird told me that the Avalon Hotel & Spa is apparently the greenest hotel in the Pacific Northwest – so this is perfect for tree hugging folks.
Choose green cleaners over conventional store bought toxic cleaners.
Recycle some household items.
Do something smart for your heart (it is American Heart Month) and the planet and join the nature gym.
Get the whole family outside into nature during winter.
Hug a tree.
Enjoy some solar made music!
Make some Organic & Natural Homemade Chocolate Covered Cherries.
Whip up some organic cupcakes and top them off with pretty and sweet candied flowers.
Have a meatless meal this week (or two or three).
Quit making excuses about why you can’t go green.

Coming up later today a review of Moonpads – which if you haven’t noticed, we’re currently holding a cool giveaway for.

What sort of green Valentine’s Day fun do you have planned?

Peggy’s Favorite Posts from Year One

Peggy — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:00:54 +0000

As another way of celebrating our first anniversary, Jennifer and I are compiling our fave posts of the past year. As many of you longtime readers know, I joined Tree Hugging Family in February. So, while I haven’t been here the entire year, I’ve at least been a Tree Hugging Family reader for that long.

It’s been a wonderful experience. I have the dedicated community here to thank for that. And, of course, my fun green co-blogger Jennifer who got this blog off to such a great start and keeps it going that way.

Here are my 12 favorite posts of the last year. They don’t belong to a particular month. I jumped around the categories a bit. We write so much, it was difficult to choose. So, please chime in if I’ve left out your favorite post! : )

Candied Flowers — I love both flowers and candy, so this idea is just awesome to me. Thanks to Jennifer for putting the directions together for us.

Hug This Tree: The Chocolate Tree — That’s right. I’ve been fascinated with cacao for years now. I just adore the sound of the word, and the taste of chocolate. Yum.

Moving on from the sweet theme . . .

Used for the New Year — This was my very first post for Tree Hugging Family. I was a guest blogger then. If you missed it, please ponder just what’s so wrong with “used.”

CleanWell’s Kid-Safe Hand Cleaning Products — This one may seem strange, but I loved receiving CleanWell to review. While I decided not to purchase the soap, I’m on my third installment of the natural hand sanitizing spray.

Hug This Animal: Bonobo — Of course, the bonobo is my favorite primate. I think. I really like them all, but if I had to pick in a pinch I’d say I admire the bonobo best. And we still have a lot of work left to do to protect them.

One Small Step: Please Don’t Feed the Animals — I want to say this to the “crazy duck lady” who empties out bags of bread each day, but I don’t have the heart.

Green Wedding Idea: Wedding Cake Toppers — I’m not a huge fan of weddings, but I found these cake toppers to be very redeeming! And cute. Too cute.

Meatless Meals: How to Cook Everything Vegetarian — Well, I still think this cookbook rocks, so by extension, I like this post as well. I need to make naked tamales again soon!

Green Book Review: Big Green Purse — My favorite green book of the year!

Cats and Climate Change: Greening Feral Cats Too — Don’t forget the feral kitties.

Biodegradable Resting Spots — Sounds morbid, but it’s important to think about.

Eco-Friendly Birthday Theme Cakes — Jennifer picks her favorites, beautiful! And interesting.

What are your favorite Tree Hugging Family posts?

Image via Weddingbee.

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in September 2008

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Great Summer Projects, Crafts, & Nature Activities for Kids…

Jennifer — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:39:29 +0000

With summer here, maybe you’re looking for something new to do. We’ve posted lots on fun kid activities, so I thought I’d round up a good bunch of stuff that you and more importantly, your kids, might enjoy. Don’t forget, if all else fails, there’s always a picnic at the park.

Nature based fun:

Messy & colorful fun:

Plant based fun:

Recycled fun:

Yummy fun:

Now you can’t say the kids are bored – there are enough projects here to get you going on the path to summer fun.

Click here to learn about all the current contests, themes, and green challenges going on at Tree Hugging Family in June 2008

[image via stock.xchng]

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Candied Flowers

Jennifer — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:01:16 +0000

Candied flowers are one of my favorite things ever. You can use them for so many things:

Cake, pie, sorbet, ice cream, and cupcake toppers.
Bag them up and give as gifts.
Add to summer drinks.
Decoration for dishes or around a holiday table.
To teach kids about edible flowers.
You can use super tiny bags and turn them into gift tags on presents. I’m not a fan of the plastic use here, but it looks fabulous.
Add them to easter baskets.
Wedding favors.

Plus they taste great. I made candied flowers for the first time when I was about 10 years old – candied lilacs actually and I’ve been in love with edible flowers ever since.

There are many recipes out there for candied, or crystallized flowers but the basic gist of most is simply that you’re going to be coating them with a sugar mixture.

Good flowers to sugar coat: Lilacs, violets, rose petals, cowslip, angelica, rosemary, sage, pinks, borage, primroses, and lavender. You can also coat leaves like lemon balm, lemon verbena, mint, and bergmot.

No matter what flowers you use, they always need to be home grown organic, or purchased from a reliable organic source. Flowers drink up and store pesticides easily, you don’t need that in your system.

To crystallize flowers and leaves:

Pick flowers on a sunny dry day.
Remove stalks and white bases from petals, also remove any petals that look funky from your pile, because the sugaring makes problems stand out.
Lightly beat an egg white until just foamy.
Dip each flower into the egg white to coat. You can use plastic tweezers (metal will bruise petals).
Dip into caster sugar.
Place on wax paper atop a wire cooling rack.
Place in your extremely low heated oven with the door slightly open – I tried open air solar flowers once, but forgot that little flowers will just blow away. Don’t do it. I suppose you could place your flowers in an enclosed solar oven, but you’d have to make sure you could maintain low heat, and solar cookers tend to get super hot.
Once they dry in the oven, store in an airtight container. I’m not sure how long you can keep them, they’re never around long enough for me to find out – people love them.

There are other same-minded, but slightly different recipes around:

Create delicious candied flowers

A Spring Trifle – with candied lilacs

Orange Blossom Cake with Candied Orchids

Take Time to Stop and Eat the Flowers

Edible Flowers: Cook, Grow, Buy – a truly excellent read.

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