Spring-Time Pleasures: Edible flower Biscuits

This time of year, it is a delight to walk through the woods and lanes and take in the abundance of spring flowers. Even city streets and parks have a generous range of flowers. Many of these flowers are edible and can make a beautiful addition to dishes.

Collecting flowers is a great activity for immersing in nature and progressing identification skills. To follow this up with the baking and consumption of biscuits, makes for an afternoon well spent!

When collecting flowers, please adhere to the usual sensible safeguards and civilities: one hundred per cent positive identification; awareness of which species are protected; picking in areas permitted and where plants are abundant; taking only a small fraction.

The basketful below reflects common native flowers, plus some garden varieties, available in April and into May.

In a short walk along a semi-rural lane in Bristol, I found the following edible flowers
• Red & white dead-nettles Lamium purpureum & Lamium album
• Common daisy Bellis perennis
• Forsythia Forsythia x intermedia
• Common dog-violet Viola riviniana
• Primrose Primula vulgaris
• Forget-me-not Myosotis arvensis or sylvatica
• Dandelion Taraxacum officinale
• Flowering currant Ribes sanguineum
• Common Hawthorn Crataegeus monogyna

Plus the following, which contain small amounts of cyanogenic compounds and should only be eaten in small quantities, especially raw.
• Cherry blossom Prunus species
• Blackthorn Prunus spinosa

Any simple biscuit recipe will work to make flower biscuits. I use:
100g sugar
100g butter
225g plain flour

The ingredients are mixed into a dough, rolled to about half a cm in thickness, then cut into their shapes. You then simply press the flowers, minus their stalks, onto the unbaked biscuits.

Bake in a preheated, moderate oven or Dutch oven, for 10 to 15 minutes, then sit back and enjoy the delights of Spring!