Celebrating the Cypriot Rose Festival

Rose water, rose essential oil and roses are one of the special products from Cyprus. Strangely, not even regular visitors to the island don’t seem to know this. I have been using their special Rose oil in making my own therapeutic oils for years so was thrilled to learn more about this.

Roses are grown in and around the Agros Village in Cyprus. Every year, they celebrate with a Rose Festival. For a couple of weekends, visitors can learn about the distillation of the rose oil, making of traditional products and sample products made with rose water. There is also a chance to join them in harvesting the precious petals every morning.

To celebrate the Rose Festival in London, we had a special evening of pampering beauty treatments, rose water flavoured delights and a flower arranging lesson.

Have you ever tasted any of these rose flavoured delights from Cyprus?

Rose water is used a lot in Cypriot cooking, especially in desserts.

Cypriot delight (picture above) is like a Turkish delight but with an intense rose flavour. It’s gorgeous.

Rose syrup with milk is this lovely pink drink which is really popular in the Middle East and other Asian Muslim countries. In Malaysia, we call this Air Bandung.

We also had rose flavoured chocolates, rose cupcakes and rose flavoured cocktails.

This vibrant looking dessert is called Mahalepi. A jelly is made with corn flour and served with sweet, chilled rose syrup. Very refreshing.

You can find out more about the Rose and other festival on the Visit Cyprus website.

EatCookExplore was a guest of the Cyprus Tourism Authority