More Reasons to Move to France

Well, I finally ordered several items from the aforementioned Confiserie Florian. They have an amazing selection of flower items and I was delighted with everything that I got. First, there were rose and violet gels. They are little soft gel square candies covered in sugar. Both have flower petals in them and and nice flavor. I also got white chocolate rose and white chocolate violet bars. The chocolate is rich and flavorful and both have a lot of candied flowers in them. Lastly, I got some calissons: almond shaped candies with a firm paste-like consistency. They are made with melon and are flavored with rose or violet and coated with a rose or violet icing. In a previous order, I got some crystalized petals from them. It was a nice assortment of roses, violets, verbana, and mimosa. The nice thing about these petals was that they were bigger than most others.

In domestic flower food news, I ordered some very nice lavender-vanilla sugar from the Spice Barn. It's great on French Toast and I imagine that it would be great on lavender scones or shortbread.

Roses Galore!

On my recent honey- moon, I was happy to come across lots of flower foods. In Greece, on the island of Rhodes, they make a lot of rose products. I brought several home. First, there's Rose Flavored Greek Delight. They are square jelly candies covered in powered sugar. They are incredible. The rose flavor is excellent, the texture is nice and the powered sugar add the perfect finishing touch. Next, there's "Rose Caramels." While I expected them to be rose flavored caramels, they're actually little rose flavored hard candies. Once again, they have a really nice rose flavor. I also got a rose product whose name I don't know. (The writing was all in Greek.) It's basically a really dense rose fudge that comes in a little tub. The flavor is really rosey. I also bought some rose jam which I didn't care for. It was very sweet and it didn't have a strong rose flavor. I prefer the rose jams from France. They also had lots of rose and rose-honey liqueurs which I didn't get since I already have some from France. It Italy, I found some more of the aforementioned rose cookies. I also got some "crema di rosa canina." I was rather disappointed. It tasted more like fruit than roses. Oh well.

Back at home, I was very excited to come across Langford Foods' Petals Shortbread. They come in three flavors: Lemon, Cranberry and Orange. Sadly, I was disappointed. The flowers are really just decorative and do not impart any flower flavor to the shortbread. The shortbread itself was very bland and natural tasting, not rich and buttery as shortbread should be. They also make a bark of grains, granola and petals.


Lastly, while searching the internet for flower foods, I came across Charssi spoon fudge in White Chocolate Rose and Chocolate Lavender. The white chocolate rose was somewhat disappointing. Although it had a nice flavor, I couldn't really taste any rose. The chocolate lavender however was amazing. It has a rich milk chocolate base with a wonderful lavender flavor. You can order them at http://www.charssi.com/.

I found a website for a store in France called that has the most incredible selection of flower foods. They have lots of sweets, such as white chocolate with rose or violet, nougat with rose or violet, flower jelly candies, jams, syrups, liqueurs and many other wonderful things. They also have flower recipes, but they're in French. I have not ordered anything yet (the shipping costs more than the products.) The site is: http://www.confiserieflorian.co.uk/

Lots of Flowery Treats

This is a very nice rose-lavender tea made by Shonfelds. You can really taste both flowers. It comes in a pretty glass canister as well!

I came across this Valentine's day tea by Harney and Sons. It's chocolate with rose petals. The rose flavor is subtle, but overall the tea is quite good. Plus, it comes in a nice little tin.

On a now not so recent trip to England, I discovered some wonderful flower foods. First were these delicious Italian rose cookies: Biscotto Di Frolla Ricca alla rosa. They were rich butter cookies with a strong rose flavor. They were buttery, almost like shortbread. They were delicious!

While shopping the in oh-so-posh Harrods department store in London, I was very happy to discover that they had opened a location of the aforementioned Laduree in the store. After having a fancy rose pastry there, I took some violet tea home. The flavor is delicate, but nice.

Cornmeal Violet Macaroons

I discovered » Chocolate & Zucchini sweetly by accidently last year, looking for recipes.

In short: this blog is written by Parisan Clotilde Dusoulier, an amazing and imaginative chef who is kind enough to share her witty banter and fabulous recipes.

Or they at least sound and look fabulous - I have yet to try out one but I plan to soon. How about » Macarons Maïs Violette?