Wonder Wednesday 145: Desiccated Rose Candy
Giving Goth Vibes
Roses hold a lot of symbolism in human lives - love & loss, perfume & putrefaction, glamor & gothic. This Halloween Wonder Wednesday 145, we're focusing on the glorious goth vibes of roses! Whatever context roses hold for you, this is a fun and easy recipe to make that packs a super power garden inspired Halloween visual punch for your Halloween party goodies spreads!
We're thinking vampires, drippy candles, blood, bats, Victorian era manors, and a soundtrack of Bauhaus, The Cure, & Siouxie & the Banshees on repeat! So put the record needle on Bella Lugosi's Dead and let's make some sweet and crispy candied rose petals!
But I don't grow roses!
No Worries! You don't need to! The main thing I can't stress enough is that the edible roses and rose petals you use are organically grown. This is crucial as commercial (and most garden) roses are VERY heavily sprayed with fungicide and insecticides. You don't want to creep over to your neighbors front yard like a ghost and heist some roses in the night. These would very likely be sprayed.
Rather, use dried rose petals like I did, or you can buy certified organically grown roses or rose petals at various florists or grocery stores. Many crystalized and candied flower recipes use egg white to crystalize the sugar onto the surface, but this recipe is, as always, vegan - of course! So no worries about using egg whites for allergy or ethical reasons.
Why are roses so tragically symbolic?
In gothic literature, roses are a symbol of tragic death and love. The heyday of gothic literature was turn of the 19th century (Late 1700s- early 1800s). A popular example in the genre would be Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which she wrote in 1816 at age eighteen. But there have of course been lots of revivals since then, like for example when Bram Stoker wrote Dracula in 1897, Ira Levin wrote Rosemary's Baby in 1967, and Elvira's unfaltering queen cult icon status since the 1980s.
Gothic novels are said to have a prevailing atmosphere of mystery and terror and often employed floriography - or the language of flowers as symbol to convey messages. Each color has a meaning, as well as the actual rose itself holding a meaning. In ancient cultures, roses symbolized power and strength. Sending flowers in the Victorian era was like sending a coded message! You better know the code or you might send the wrong message!
The black rose (which isn't actually black, but a very deep purple red) has been adopted by pop culture for centuries. It became really popular in the Victorian era as part of gothic and macabre literature. It's been sent as a message: of a romantic break-up, by the Italian mafia to relay imminent murder, by the turn of the century anarchists to represent the death of old ways and rebirth of a new equitable governance for all, and in gothic genre literature to signify a change in a character's personality or character.
The rose - alive or dead, red or black - was adopted by the goth bands and post-punk subculture since the early 1980s for it's macabre imagery and symbol. And if you haven't guessed by now, that's been a big influence on my life! I was born & raised in the same city as Edgar Allen Poe after all! So of course leveling up Halloween to be garden inspired in true gothic style is exactly the perfect choice! Will you join me?
All these centuries worth of drama and dark symbol, make rose's power & mystery an absolute perfect inspiration for this easy and tasty Halloween Wonder Wednesday project!
This crispy sweet gothic treat can be sprinkled on Dracula themed cupcakes, tossed over a Frankenstein cookies, scattered around calavares candy skulls, or simply snacked on solo while you're dressed as vampire handing out candy!
Wonder Wednesday 145: Desiccated Rose Candy
Materials
An oven or dehydrator
Parchment paper
Baking sheet
Certified organic, fair trade, edible roses or rose petals (fresh or dried). Ideally red for color effect, but any color works
Organic fair trade sugar
Water
Sauce pan
Spoon & fork
Preparation
Wash and dry your roses if they are fresh. If you are using full roses, vs. rose petals, take apart the roses to get just the petals. Make sure there are no green parts mixed in.
Place a piece of parchment paper onto a baking sheet.
Preheat the oven to 180-200ËšF (94ËšC).
Make a simple syrup. You can use whatever type of sugar you like. White sugar will make a completely clear syrup.
(Cane sugar or turbinado sugar (which I used because it's what I had on hand) make a more yellowish syrup.)
To make simple syrup, boil equal parts sugar and water - so 1/2 c. sugar to 1/2 c. water, for example. The amount of simple syrup you need to make depends on how many rose petals you have. I used 1/4 cup each because I wasn't making a big batch.
Melt the sugar into the water over a low, medium heat until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Stir it and watch it carefully not to let it burn or bubble over! Low & Slow!
(If you use store-bought simple syrup, which is fine, warm it over low heat)
Procedure
Once you have your warm simple syrup, add the rose petals.
Remove from the heat and let the petals steep over for a few minutes. Stir the petals around and make sure they're all well coated in simple syrup.
Then, soak in the syrup for about another 10 minutes.
Strain the petals from the syrup.
The more syrup you press out the quicker they will desiccate, but the less sweet they will be.
Spread the petals onto the parchment
Place into the oven and bake on low. The time is really variable depending on how humid your environment is. Mine is very humid and it took about 2.5 hours.
Regardless of humidity, check them every 20 minutes to make sure they aren't burning and to turn the baking sheet 90Ëš to rotate the drying edges as the back will often dry faster than the front.
You may also need to flip, fluff, or spread the petals depending on how they seem to be drying.
*Remember - sugar burns very easily, so low and slow is the key to this stage also.
Once fully dry, remove from the oven, let cool on the baking sheet (or if you're in a very humid place like me, let cool in the oven turned off as it cools).
Place on your most gothic plate or bowl and snack away!
Extensions
Use full roses! Could there be a more morose and dramatic way to snack than to munch on desiccated candied full rose heads on long thorny stems? Simply dip a full rose head into the syrup, hold for a minute or so and make sure it's fully coated, then dehydrate.
Can't bear to toss out that rose infused simple syrup? Me neither!
Boil it down low and slow until it thickens. Use it as a "bloody" syrup on vampire themed ice cream sundaes, drizzle it over vampire bat themed iced cupcakes & cookies, use it in vampire themed mocktails, or get really clever and turn it into rose flavored caramels!
Tie this project into reading and writing lessons! Check out this article by New York Public Children's Librarian on a
Seeds to Sprout
Wonder Wednesday 94
Are you super psyched on making Victorian inspired floral syrups? Well try your hand at another super easy and tasty one - Violet syrup! Make with wild collected or dried violets
Wonder Wednesday 86
Let's stay macabre and draw corpse flowers! Did you know that Victorians would eat the mummy corpses they were raiding from Egyptian lands? EW! It's true! They (mistakenly) thought they had health properties! Those people were so weird! Let's just draw corpse flowers step-by-step instead!
Wonder Wednesday 50
Since we're on the topic of eating gross things, let's make edible spooky scat!
Learn all about different kinds of animal scat and then sculpt them with "scat" made from this fun and super tasty no-bake cookie recipe!
(Don't be scared. It's basically instant oatmeal and hot cocoa powder, then add the berries or nuts that the animal, like a bear, ate! kids LOVE this project!)