Butterfly Pea Experiments
The butterfly pea vine (Clitoria ternatea) is one of my new favorites in the garden for several reasons. It’s gorgeous year round, resilient, a nitrogen fixer for soil, and fun to create experiments! In this garden blog, I’m going to share a few different fun projects your family will enjoy experimenting with using butterfly pea blooms.
Butterfly pea blooms harvested off the vine in our garden here in central Floria.
Butterfly Tea
Whether you like tea hot or iced, using Butterfly pea vine blooms will shake up your average tea routine. It has a nice, sweet taste without the added acidity like Hibiscus can sometimes add to teas. There have been some studies that show there are some health benefits to consuming Butterfly pea flowers. They have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties that have been shown to help hydrate your skin and reduce blood sugars.
To make Butterfly Tea, you will need butterfly pea flowers, water, a boiling pot, strainer, and optional strainer. Start by collecting and rinsing your butterfly pea flowers. Use ¼ cup or around 15 butterfly pea flowers to two cups of water. Once your water is boiling, remove from the stove and add your flowers. Allow the flowers to steep until the water is a dark purple or indigo color. I wouldn’t steep the flowers for more than ten minutes because the flowers tend to fall apart. The flowers can be strained at this point. To add more flavor, you can choose a sweetener to add more taste.
Magic Blue Rice
Add some flair to your family’s dinner by making blue rice! The InstaPot is one of my favorite kitchen tools and this experiment was a must. We collected about a dozen or more butterfly pea blooms. After adding the correct measurement of rice, water, and a splash of olive oil, we stirred the blooms into the mixture. Once the rice was done cooking, I used a spoon to gently remove the flowers from the rice. Then I stirred it up and served it to the family. Think Little Gardenista ate the most rice she ever has at that meal!
Fairy Lemonade
Who doesn’t love lemonade after playing out in the garden? Our Myers Lemon tree yielded about a dozen lemons last season and we were able to make homemade lemonade. We added a fun twist by creating Blue Lemonade thanks to a handful of blooms from the Butterfly pea vine. I boiled the blooms in a pot for about ten minutes, strained the blooms from the water, and let the blue water cool. Once the water cooled, we mixed in our juice from our lemons, a little monk fruit extract (in place of sugar), and a few ice cubes to chill.
A cool thing we learned in this experiment is that the pH of the lemon juice will alter the shade of the drink. The mixture, which started off a deep purple, became noticeably lighter because the lemon lowered the pH of the lemonade mixture.
Suncatcher Art
As I’ve mentioned in August’s blog, creating Suncatchers with items hand picked from the garden is one of my all time favorite activities to do with Little Gardenista and she loves it too! The purplish-blue blooms from the Butterfly pea vine add a vibrant pop to any suncatcher project.
Pastry Decor
For my daughter’s first birthday, many moons ago, I made her a homemade cake. The whole cake, including the decorations, were made from scratch. Funny enough, the Butterfly pea blooms were her favorite part of the cake. She ate all of them before digging into the icing!!
Below are a few other project inspirations:
Butterfly Latte
Magic Ice cubes
Purple Eggs
Galaxy Slushies
Butterfly Mocktails
Blue or Green dye
Hope your friends and family find these experiments as fun as we have! If you create one of these projects or discover a new one, I would love to hear about it. Enjoy!