How to Make Flower Garnishes for Desserts

Amaze your friends by garnishing your desserts with flowers made from nuts, chocolate, kumquats, or maraschino cherries.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Waxed Paper
• Candied Cherries
• Green Gumdrops
• Kumquats
• Lemons Extract
• Maraschino Cherries
• Red Or Green Grapes
• Semisweet Chocolates
• Sugars Cubes
• Kitchen Knives
• Peelers
• Brazil nuts

1. Create Brazil nut flowers by boiling the nuts, then removing them one at a time, quickly slicing them lengthwise with a vegetable parer into paper-thin curls and arranging the curls around candied or maraschino cherry halves.
2. Make chocolate flowers by melting 2 squares of semisweet chocolate over low heat, allowing the chocolate to cool slightly, and then spreading it 1/8-inch thick on waxed paper. Refrigerate 10 minutes and cut into leaves, flowers and stems. Remove the flowers with a spatula.
3. Create kumquat or cherry flowers by snipping kumquats or well-drained maraschino cherries into 4 or 6 sections, cutting about 3/4 of the way through, then spreading sections apart gently to resemble petals. Cut green gumdrops in half for leaves.
4. Create flaming flowers by soaking sugar cubes in lemon extract just before serving, then placing 1 cube in the center of each kumquat or cherry flower and igniting the cube.
5. Make frosted grapes by dipping small clusters of red or green grapes into water, then into granulated sugar or fruit-flavored gelatin. Dry them on wire racks.