Cooking with Toddlers: Flower Petal Cookies

Toddlers love to pluck and pick things from the earth. I know because I have a bald apple tree. My dear little toddler has managed to pluck off the vast majority of blossoms from our beautiful apple tree. I also caught him “pruning” the lilac trees. And by pruning I mean ripping all the flowers, branches and leaves off.

Clearly Fig is into flowers.

In an attempt to quell his shrubbery inquisition (before I lost every single tree and plant in our yard) we decided to gather all our edible flowers and turn them into a cookie.

Most toddlers will be keen on flower gathering. It’s an easy way to involve them in the kitchen even if you don’t have the time or desire to involve them in the rest of the recipe.  It’s also a natural way to teach kids about flowers without actually any formal lesson. I explained to Fig that we only wanted the flower petals for this cookie; not the leaves, not the stems, not the sepals etc. After a bit, he got the hang of it.

You can use any edible flowers for these cookies. We choose lavender, calendula, lilacs, kale flowers ( also known as kale raab) and clover. A combination of fresh and dried will do just fine. Make sure you don’t put too much lavender in these cookies or they will start tasting like a face mask.

More information on edible flowers can be found here.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of edible flowers, dried or fresh.
• 1 cup of sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup of flax seeds
• 1/2 cup of hemp seeds
• 1 cup of almond flower
• 2 tablespoons of chia seeds
• 1/2 cup of almond milk ( any milk will do if you don’t have almond milk handy)
• 3 tbs of maple syrup
• 1/4 cup of coconut oil, melted

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325 F
• Wash flowers well and pick off petals and place in a large mixing bowl.
• Combine flowers with sunflower seeds, flax, hemp, almond flowers and chia seeds. Mix well.
• Stir in the melted coconut oil, maple syrup and almond milk to the dry ingredients. Mix well.
• Line a baking sheet and spread out mixture to about 1/4 of an inch high.
• Bake for between 20-25 minutes; checking frequently to ensure the cookies are not browning too much. They should be lightly toasted.
• Cool, cut, and serve with tea.

Toddler Friendly Parts of this Recipe:

• Gathering edible flowers
• Plucking the petals off the flowers
• Measuring out the seeds
• Stirring the cookie mix