Blooming tasty: garden flowers make a perfect summer cocktail | Alice Vincent on flowers

From tiny pastel violas to honey-sweet dandelions, edible flowers make a great addition to your tipple My husband has become quite the budding cocktail connoisseur. We don't go out as much these days - we've a three-month-old baby to attend to - and so drinking cocktails in the garden is about as wild as it gets around here. Bottles of Suze and shakers appear on the worktop around 7pm, and if we're lucky, the baby's down around the same time a white negroni is plonked on the makeshift table outside.The more his barkeeping skills advance, the worse mine become. I'm now barely aware of what's in the fridge, and tend to invite guests to sort themselves out if I'm hosting them alone. But what I can offer are garnishes in the form of edible flowers - one of the great magic tricks of the garden at this time of year. They often have heartier flavours than their appearance might suggest, offering a hint of pepper (nasturtium) or spice (pinks) to an aperitif. Continue reading...