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Viola jelly

Make a delicious edible preserve with viola, violet or pansy flowers.

Violas are quite the sweetest of plants. I’ve blogged about them far too many times here, here, and here. But that’s not going to stop me finding new and wonderful ways of using them wherever I can in recipes. I grow plenty of them on my balcony, and their main use, as well as cheering me up with their adorable little faces, is as an edible garnish.

This recipe uses violas as the main ingredient, rather than simply a garnish. You can swap them for wild violets if you have many growing in your garden, or for pansies. Make sure in each case that the flowers haven’t been sprayed with anything unpleasant, be it pesticide or dog mess. As with all foraged plants, if you’re not sure, don’t eat it.

I picked these ‘Sorbet Antique Shades’ violas from my balcony. They have such a pretty range of patterns and colours.

edible viola flowers for viola jelly

Ingredients:

2 cups of viola/violet/pansy flowers
2 cups of water
2 cups of jam sugar (this has added pectin, which makes it all jelly-ish)
2 teaspoons of lemon juice

Directions:

1. Carefully wash the flowers and remove all stems and leaves. Place in a bowl.

2. Bring the water to the boil and pour over the flowers in the bowl. They’ll let out an amazing blue colour to begin with as they steep in the water. Leave for two hours.

making viola jelly

3. Pour the water and the flowers into a saucepan, add the sugar and the lemon juice and bring to the boil.

4. Simmer the mixture, stirring every so often, for half an hour or so until it thickens. Test the jelly by dropping it onto a plate that has been chilled in the fridge. If it solidifies on contact, you’re ready to go and shouldn’t leave the mixture over the heat any longer as you don’t want it to be too thick.

5. Pour the mixture into a sterilised and chilled jam jar. Leave to cool, then seal.

viola jelly

This jelly has a wonderful, warm flavour. If you tried it blindfold, you might think that it came from a berry, but it is more floral and lighter than that. It is wonderful on some soft, sweet bread, or with scones.

viola jelly

viola jelly

All the violas that I used in this recipe were a dark purple or red, bar one or two lovely golden marauders. This made a beautiful rich purple-red jelly. But if you used white violas, or golden ones, you’d get very different results. You could serve a range of differently coloured jellies to your guests if you have enough flowers in each colour.

viola jelly recipe

Let’s get nice and close to that just-baked chunk of bread and the generous helping of viola jelly that I’ve given myself. Yum.

viola jelly

7 Responses

  2. maryhysong

    oh this sounds so yummy. My violas are on the way out, but maybe over the winter. I’ve never heard of jam sugar so will have to see if we have it here or figure out the pectin/sugar equivalent.

    Reply
  4. jodi russell

    Do you leave the green part that holds the petals on or just the petals?

    Reply

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