Tea Rooms - Preserved Rose Petals ... AT MY ROSE GARDEN

Preserving the bounty from your garden is a time-honoured skill.  And preserving the fragrance, colour and flavour of rose petals will add an extra dimension to your favourite recipes... 

Sweet little morsels of dark red and pink Preserved Rose Petals are easy to make and keep indefinitely.  Because of our humidity I like to keep these refrigerated. (Unlike some recipes for rose petal preserve, this is not a paste but a delicious concoction of candied rose petals.)

These sweet preserves can be used to add a lovely dash of rose flavour and colour to lots of well loved deserts, or you may like to invent additional uses for these little jewels.

Here are a few suggestions ...  

Sprinkle your Preserved Rose Petals over home-made vanilla ice-cream; fold through whipped cream with strawberries, swirl through a luscious egg custard.   Top an iced cup cake with a few bright pink rose petals, or add them to a baked rhubarb tart.  They also add a special touch to chocolate mousse and can be used as a special ingredient in rich, gooey chocolate brownies.   

As in all recipes using rose petals – use only pesticide free roses, rinse under cool running water and snip off the bitter white base of the rose petals before use. 

Preserved Rose Petals

Ingredients:

Rose petals drained from the Rose Petal Syrup (If you have not made Rose Petal Syrup you will need to follow the recipe posted previously).

To make:
Take your drained rose petals (that have been soaking in the sugar syrup - Do NOT skip this step) and place in a small heavy based saucepan.  Do not add extra liquid.  Place the saucepan over a low to moderate heat.   

Using a wooden spoon, stir the rose petals briskly.  As you stir, press the rose petals against the base and sides of the pan with the wooden spoon.    The heat will aid the breaking down process but prevent the petals forming a paste. (Your kitchen will be filled with the most amazing rosie aroma.)  

As the rose petals shrivel and darken they will start to clump loosely.  This will take from 5 to 7 minutes, depending on the rose petals you used (some rose petals are thicker than others and will take longer).  It is at this stage that you can take the pan off the heat and allow to cool.  Do not add a lid  as this will form droplets of water as the petals cool and will spoil the preserving process.

Once the petals are cool, store them in a sterilised glass jar.  Your rose petals will keep their bright colour and fragrance with a sweet, rosie flavour.  

Serve in a pretty china dish as an exotic sprinkle for your favourite desert.

For a touch of luxury for the health conscious, add Preserved Rose Petals to a ‘healthy’ desert of chia seed soaked in chilled almond milk.

Delicious ...

Tea Rooms - Rose Petal Syrup ... AT MY ROSE GARDEN

Rose Petal Syrup captures the fragrance and colour of red roses.  

This simple sugar syrup is used cold to flavour numerous recipes; in whipped cream for cakes and deserts; frozen as a delicious sorbet;  to make home-made lemonade pink, or as a simple cordial with chilled sparkling water. 

The basic ingredients are raw, granulated sugar, water and fresh rose petals.  As for any recipes using rose petals make sure your roses have NOT been sprayed with any pesticides or anti-fungal solutions. 

Rose Petal Syrup

Ingredients:  

4 cups of fresh rose petals; 200 grams of raw granulated sugar, 175 millilitres of tap water.

To make: 

First, pick six red, fragrant just-opened roses.  

For this recipe I chose a mixture of highly perfumed, dark pink Tea roses, Mrs Reynolds Hole, Mrs B R Cant and Francis Dubrieul; the very fragrant, deep pink Bourbon rose, Mme Isaac Periere and the bright red modern climber, Red Pierre.

To prepare the roses, shake them upside down to remove insects and dust.  Rinse quickly under cool running water.  Shake dry.   Now pull the rose petals away from the green base of the rose and snip off the bitter white bases of the petals.  This can be done in one snip as you hold the rose petals together after you have pulled them away from the base.  

Measure the rose petals.  You will need approx 4 loose cups or around 60 grams of rose petals (measurements do not need to be exact).  Place the petals in a heat-proof glass bowl.  The volume of rose petals should be loose and not pressed down at this stage. 

To make the simple sugar syrup measure 200 grams of granulated raw sugar and place in a heavy based saucepan.  Add 175 millilitres of tap water.  Bring the sugar and water mixture to a light boil and stir with a wooden spoon until sugar is dissolved. Take the syrup off the heat and pour over the rose petals taking care not to splash the very hot liquid onto your skin.  The syrup will wither the rose petals and reduce their volume by at least two thirds.   Push all of the rose petals into the syrup with a wooden spoon.

Cover the bowl with cling film (this will preserve the volatile oils released by the rose petals) and allow to steep until cool.  

Strain the rose petals off but do not discard (save the rose petals for my 'rose petal preserve' recipe coming soon).  Now pour the cool liquid into a clean, sterile glass jar with a screw top lid.  You should have a  pink and lusciously fragrant syrup.  Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.  

Your Rose Petal Syrup is now ready to use.  (Recipe adapted from Geraldine Holt’s ‘Complete Book of Herbs’.)

Heirloom Roses - A Class of Hybrid Musks ... AT MY ROSE GARDEN

Hybrid Musks are a unique class of roses developed by Reverend Joseph Pemberton of England in the early 1900s.   Old enough to fit into the category of old-fashioned or 'heirloom', Hybrid Musks repeat well with sweetly fragrant blooms from Spring through to Autumn.  

After his death, Pemberton’s assistant, Ann Bentall, along with her husband John, continued on the work of breeding Hybrid Musks.   How fortunate we are to enjoy the fruits of their labour, almost a century later.

We grow a number of the early Hybrid Musks developed by Pemberton and Bentall here AT MY ROSE GARDEN.  Here are a few favourites:

Autumn Delight, with semi-double blooms of pale yellow fading to white, has a soft musk-like perfume.   Autumn Delight was released in 1933 and bred by Ann Bentall.  We grow a group of these shrub roses as part of a larger Hybrid Musk hedge.  

Ballerina, another of the Hybrid Musks bred by Ann Bentall in 1937, was reputed to be a seedling found by her in her garden.  Exquisite clusters of single, pink blooms with a white centre are slightly fragrant and loved by bees.

Buff Beauty (accompanied by yellow buttons of the herb, Tansy) is a perennial favourite, with deliciously fragrant double blooms of soft apricot.  Bred and released by Bentall in 1939, it forms a substantial shrub that continuously blooms. 

Pax, one of the earliest Hybrid Musks bred by Pemberton in 1918, has lemon, double blooms fading to creamy white as well as a soft, musk-like fragrance.  We have included a group of these as part of the Hybrid Musk hedge. 

Nur Mahal, named by Pemberton (1923) for an Indian Empress reputed to have discovered attar of roses after observing an oil slick floating on the surface of water strewn with fragrant rose petals.   This is one of the more exotically beautiful early Hybrid Musks, with brilliantly crimson blooms and a spicy, musk perfume.  


The Hybrid Musks represent all that is delightful of Spring, their open blossoms sending honey and native bees into a frenzy ... so much so that we have to warn visitors to take care when sniffing the blossoms!

...     A class of roses worth collecting!