Edible flower ice cubes

These ice cubes are easy to make, you only need a handful of edible flowers, and they look fancy in cocktails or jugs of cordial for a summer party, like you have made a lot of effort! You can match the flower to the drink, we like the cucumber flavour of borage with G&Ts or in Pimm’s, peppery nasturtium petals go well in a Bloody Mary and little minty Agastache flowers are delicious in a Mojito. But mostly we just make the ice cubes with whatever is in bloom and looks best at the time.

Photo by Sharon Cosgrove

The only tricky bit of making these ice cubes is that the flowers will float to the top if you just fill up the ice cube tray, so you have to add the water in two batches so the flowers are completely encased in the ice.

For the ice cubes
Enough small edible flowers or petals for one flower per segment in your ice cube tray, violas, borage, primroses, nasturtiums, carnations and agastache all work well.
Enough water to fill your ice cube tray
An ice cube tray, I find a silicone ice cube tray is the best as it is easiest to remove the ice cubes without breaking them

Fill each section of the ice cube tray 2/3 full with water. Add an edible flower into each section of the ice cube tray. Put the ice cube tray into the freezer and allow the cubes to freeze very solid. They need to be properly frozen otherwise as you pour more water on it will defrost the cubes and the flower will float up anyway.

 Once they are frozen, this usually takes 6 hours, take the ice cube tray out of the freezer and fill each cube up to the top with cold water. Freeze until solid.

 The ice cubes are now ready to beautify your drinks. If you want to make more ice cubes for an event but only have one tray then pop all the ice cube out and put them in a freezer bag to store in the freezer until you need them. You can now make another batch of edible flower ice cubes.