FACTORY GIRL X FLOWERS

Flour, and flowers. And a lot of butter.

It’s a thing we’ve become known for, and a thing that we are unapologetically into - a signature bit, you could say. As we see it, though, the substance is just as important as the style. We have been putting flowers on, and in, our bakes since before it became the trendy thing it is now, and we’d like to think that we do it a little bit better, and a lot more intentionally, than much of the rest.

Yes, flowers make everything pretty. But if the underlying product is not perfectly delicious, and fresh, then the flowers are just a cover-up, a gimmick. We’d rather think of our use of flowers as a theatrical foil - they draw one in, and then the baked good itself is what should really shine and linger on the tongue and mind.

We’ve seen social media blow up with posts of flowers on cakes, and cakes flavored with flowers, and flowers sticking out of cakes, and cakes drowned in petals. And all of that is fabulous and we’re here for that party! But we’d like it to be known, for the record, that we’re doing our best, as we have since we first started working this way, to be using botanicals in and on our bakes in a responsible way, and one in which is meant to elevate seasonality and creativity and all that is actually sincerely tasty and tasteful. Read on to see how we’re bringing the beauty of nature to our baked goods.

In 2023, we grew 60% of the edible and non-toxic blooms we used. We had to source about 5% from local florists. The remaining, we personally foraged or sourced from our beloved organic local flower farmers.

  • It starts with a seed. If only this was even just a 10th of my seed collection. I'm addicted. I think of it as better odds than the lottery.

  • And then they go to our basement grow lab! This was the set-up when I first started it last year, now we've tripled (maybe quadrupled?) our little laboratory.

  • We nurture the babies on heat mats and under grow lights through the dark winter months.

  • And then they go upstaris to the studio, which in the spring turns into "the potting shed."

  • My happy place.

  • Last year we grew more seeds than we had space for in and around the bakery garden!

  • And we were generously offered a big row on a beautiful flower farm close-by in Stockton NJ!

  • A little slice of the bakery garden, right outside our back/side door, in June bloom.

  • One morning's harvest from our on-site bakery garden.

  • Roses, nasturtium, and bunny-tails in the bakery garden.

  • My obsession with roses has me adding new rose bush varieties to our collection each year.

  • Being able to use our home-grown (all organic, not trucked from who-knows-where!) flowers on our cakes = the best.

  • Harvest of beautiful blooms on the farm all started from seed!

  • Okay one more.. :)

  • No really, this is the last one. From harvest....

  • To cake!

Connection.

And a celebration of beauty and our natural world. For the flowers we didn’t grow from seed, especially peonies and dahlias, we are fortunate to have forged wonderful working relationships with our local flower farmers - getting us out of the bakery and into our community. Another large percent we forage - keeping us connected to nature, noticing each new wildflower that pops up at different times of the year, noting the color and texture changes in the landscape, reveling in the sweetness of it all.

Responsibility.

We are passionate about making sure that the flowers we use on and in our baked goods are as safe as they are beautiful. Through years of experience, research, reading and learning, we’ve honed in on the varieties that are delicious to eat, the ones that are safe to use but maybe not so pleasant to chew on, and the ones that really just shouldn’t be around your food.

There are a lot of botanicals out there that, while beautiful, are either mildly or wildly toxic, and we’re seeing them used on cakes celebrated all over social media and, gotta say, we worry a little bit about that. Over time, our knowledge has evolved, and yes, we’ve learned that some blooms we’ve placed on cakes in the past are on the no-no list, and we’re constantly striving to be a model that promotes informed, intententional, and responsible use of botanicals in and on bakes.

Sourcing the flowers from our own pesticide-free garden and from the farms of our organic gardener friends is also a part of that responsibility. This keeps the chemicals of commercially-grown blooms out of the equation, as well as the carbon-miles of shipping flowers from all over the world - which is another reason we stay committed to seasonality as much as we can.

Balance and Innovation.

As much as we’re passionate about learning what we CAN’T do with blooms, we’re equally passionate about learning what we CAN do with blooms, in ways that maybe we haven’t seen before. Come spring and summer time, this place sometimes looks like a science lab - we’re infusing sugar syrups, and salts, and butter and oils, we’re stacking the dehydrator with petals, we’re loading up the presses (and our extensive collection of heavy cookbooks) with flowers to preserve, and we’re asking ourselves where it makes sense to try to add a little floral flavor and where it just should not be. While we love pressing-the-envelope with the girly floral thing, we’re also keen to keeping a critical eye to recognize when enough-is-enough and where delicate balance tips the scale into gilding-the-lily territory.

  • When the flowers in the grown-from-seed garden match the quote on the cake - !!!

  • We wont put hydrangeas on a cake (toxic!) but we will hang and dry them to add whimsy to our studio.

  • We grew and pressed THOUSANDS of violas.

  • And made THOUSANDS of pressed-flower cookies.

  • Innovation of what we call the "sidecar" allows us to use flowers for decoration that might otherwise be too ephemeral.

  • It makes us proud to say that we grew or foraged, and then pressed, all of the flowers on our pressed-flower cakes.

  • The beautiful color of rose petals.

  • Late-summer harvest design - dahlias from Shoppon's run farm + our own blooms.

  • Lilac blooms steeping in cream to become...

  • Lilac cream puffs!

  • Wild violets on the cake, wild violets in the buttercream - which gave its surprising aqua hue!

  • Bruleed tart with cherry blossom custard cream - such a treat in early Spring!

  • Dehydrated quince-blossom petals - made into...

  • one of our signature flowers+sprinkles blends, for use in...

  • decorating our bakes!

  • We did say we did thousands of pressed flower cookies.

  • Forcythia petal dust - brings a pop of color to baked goods.

  • as do marigold petals and pink peppercorn flakes on pistachio-glazed olive-oil cake.

  • Thousands of violas...

  • Thousands of pressed flower cookies. :)

  • Honeysuckle is one of our favorite wild-foraged ingredients.

  • Preserving summer!

  • The flower press lives in my car in the summer, and I'm not ashamed to leave a party for a few minutes to press a batch of treasured wild blooms.

  • We've been growing our own saffron for a couple of years now - makes us feel pretty cool.

  • Candied peony petals.

  • Pollinators in the garden!

  • We do grow many non-edible/toxic varieties in our garden, like daffodils and lilies, and poppies, but we put those in a vase, not in or on the bakes. (Tulips, too - they're one of the dicey ones, some say the petals are okay to eat, we say we'd rather not risk it.)

All of this, and yet we’d like to clarify that we are NOT a florist. First and foremost, we are a bakery, a team of four bakers who are passionate about fresh, seasonal baked goods, and about making them as beautiful as they are delicious. We delight in celebrating seasonality, and of being connected to the natural world. From our composted banana peels, coffee grinds, and strawberry tops, we grow beauty, and we love sharing that with you.