making rose sugar

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The other half works at a high end grocery store with a floral department. From time to time at night, the person in charge of that department will put together a large bouquet of the roses they can no longer sell and gives it to the other half to bring home to me. I don't care that they're free, I'm just thrilled to get surprised with roses! I don't think anyone has showered me with flowers as much as this man does. The roses are organic, so they're food safe. I've thought about making rosewater and rose petal jelly with them after I've finished displaying them, but it's been hard to do very many time consuming projects this summer. Instead, today I think I'm going to make some rose petal sugar. It barely takes any time at all and I won't feel guilty for just putting the wilted flowers in the compost bin. If you've ever made vanilla sugar by sticking a split vanilla bean in a jar of sugar, this is pretty similar. After cutting the white part off of the rose petals, you put a thick layer of petals on top of a layer of sugar in a jar, then more sugar on top of that, then more petals, more sugar, and repeat until either the jar is full or you're out of petals. Put in a cool dark area for a month, and you've got rose sugar. You might wonder, "what would someone do with this stuff?" This will be nice for making a batch of rose lemonade or for making a fancy batch of shortbread cookies, but it will also work well for making a rose scented sugar scrub (just mix the rose sugar with coconut oil). It can be used in pretty much anything that calls for sugar that you don't mind having a slight rose flavor. I'm planning to give a jar of it at Christmas time to the woman who sends the flowers home for me. Photo is not mine, but found at toriavey.com