If you're looking for something fun and new for your spring brunch or Easter gathering, Butterfly Pea Flower powder is a surprisingly vivid natural food coloring that imparts all shades of blue from baby blues, rich blue greans to a vivid cobalt blue. It is an actual pea flower and has been used for centuries in Southeast Asia for its natural food coloring capabilities as well as its many health benefits including its benefits as an antioxidant.
As if this weren't enough to get excited about, Butterfly Pea Flower is a natural wonder and will turn any dish from blue to a pinkish purple in front of your very eyes by adding citrus such as lemon or lime juice. This makes it fun in baking, cooking and drink making. Kids love it!
I've put together some favorite breakfast or brunch recipes and ideas that will add fun, creativity & beauty to your spring soirée.
Blue Pancakes
Adding a little butterfly pea flower powder to your dry ingredients will give your pancakes a stunning blue almost turquoise color. Note, a white flour will create a brighter lighter blue where a whole flour will darken the color a little from the browns of the whole grain.
Our Family Pancake Recipe
I come from a long line of great cooks! This is the recipe handed down to me from my mom and is my only pancake recipe, the only one I need. They are fluffy and delicious!
Serving size 3-4 people
Ingredients:
- 1 cup Flour (Whole or White, Wheat or Spelt Flour. Note, a white flour will create a brighter lighter blue where a whole flour will darken a little from the browns of the whole grain)
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Baking Powder
- 1 tsp Chai Spice Blend (optional)
- 2 tsp Butterfly Pea Flower Powder (optional)
- 3/4 cup Milk
- 2 eggs
- 2 Tbsp Oil (coconut oil liquified, grape seed oil, sunflower or vegetable oil)
Instructions:
- Gather three bowls, one for dry ingredients, one for wet ingredients and one for whipping the egg whites.
- Measure and mix flour, salt, baking powder, chai spice blend and butterfly pea flower powder together in your dry bowl.
- In your wet bowl mix milk, oil and egg yolks. Separate egg yokes from egg whites, putting the egg whites into their own bowl. Mix wet ingredients together, beating the yolks in until thoroughly mixed.
- Mix the wet and dry ingredients thoroughly but not to excess.
- Using an egg beater, whip the egg whites until they make a peak when you lift the beater upwards. Tip: add a sprinkle of blue powder to your egg whites before you finish beating them.
- GENTLY fold the egg whites into the batter of already mixed wet and dry ingredients. Avoid over mixing the whites. Whipped whites will add fluff to your pancakes so you avoid mixing them to the point where all the air is lost from the fluffy whites. Some small clumps of whites are okay but you want to fold the whites in to the point where there are very few to none of these clumps left. You will see that your batter increases in size quite a bit from the egg whites.
- Portion out the batter to cook on a hot greased pan or griddle.
- Optional - if you want to add fruit to your pancakes like blueberries, raspberries, sliced peaches etc. gently press them onto each wet pancake just after you pour them on the griddle.
If you prefer to make blue waffles or crepes there are many recipes to be found online. I recommend adding roughly 1-2 tsp of the butterfly pea flower to most recipes for a nice blue breakfast.
Suggestion: Try our Candy Cap Mushroom Infused Honey as a Maple Syrup Alternative
Add another novel food with our Candy Cap Mushroom Infused Raw Honey, the more maple than maple syrup mushroom. This a rare dessert mushroom wild harvested on the Northern California Coast. It truly tastes more maple than maple syrup, the flavor is more complex and the aroma will astound you!
Pancake Toppings
Blue Whipping Cream
If you're going all out with a pancake spread then you are going to want whipping cream! You can easy turn your fresh whipped cream a stunning shade of blue by adding the powdered butterfly pea flower to the cream when you are about half way through whipping it.
Tip: I like to use honey to sweeten my fresh whipped cream and my favorite honeys to use are one of my infused honeys because they add a lovely flavor to the cream as well. There are 13 to choose from depending on your taste. My favorites to use in whipped cream are Cardamom, Rose, Candy Cap Mushroom (aka Maple Syrup Mushroom) and Chai Spice. I always wait until the cream is almost done being whipped to honey, this gives it enough time to mix but not flatten the cream.
Blue Cream Cheese Spread
If you're doing pancakes or maybe thinking bagels, lox, toast or other baked goods that go well with cream cheese, jazz it up with spring blue cream cheese! Super easy to make, just mix our Butterfly Pea Flower Powder into the cream cheese using a mixer until you reach your desired color.
A note on color
Since cream cheese is white the butterfly pea flower is going to give you shades of bright blues, start with a 1/2 tsp and keep adding until you reach the color you want. It does darken just a little as it sits.
Variations
- Did you know that Butterfly Pea Flower turns pinkish purple when you add citrus?
- Play with the color by squeezing lemon juice into your cream cheese. If you do this, I recommend adding some of our honey and making it a sweet spread!
- In this post I am focusing on sweet recipes for brunch but I can't mention lox and cream cheese without mentioning our Smoked Hot Pepper Honey which goes really well blended into cream cheese and spread over a bagel. Ou Smoked Hot Pepper Honey has a nice earthy smokey flavor with a good kick of heat. Garnished you bagel with lox and herbs. Yum!
Blue Frosting
If you're planning a cake or cupcakes for your brunch this is a super easy way to make a winsome topper. Try a cream cheese frosting or buttercream frosting and just add the butterfly pea flower powder until you get the color you like. The potency of the blue from this powder will surprise you and a little goes a long way. I recommend starting with 1/2 tsp for most recipes and add from there for your desired shade of blue. Also, add lemon juice if you wish to turn your frosting a purplish pink color!
My nephews favorite color is blue and for his birthday my mom, who is a fantastic baker, made this cake for him using a simple buttercream frosting recipe and added our butterfly pea flower powder then topped it with cosmos flowers from the garden, blue berries and raspberries. It was a hit!
Drinks
Of course with brunch we have to have something to drink! The blue of the butterfly pea flowers can't compete with dark teas or coffee drinks but it will come through with drinks that are lighter in color like lattes, green teas, chamomile, peppermint, lemon aid (the acid of the lemon will turn the tea a purplish pink color), mixed cocktails, mocktails, or a milky black tea.
Note: the powder is so light and fluffy it takes a bit of mixing to remove all the clumps, a warm liquid makes it a little easier to mix but cold or hot will mix in just fine.
Above all, have fun with it! Add powder as desired to get the color you want but do keep in mind that if you add a lot it will begin to impart of pea flavor, so be mindful of that as you mix your concoctions.
Simple Syrups with Honey Recipe:
Butterfly Pea Simple Syrup
This is a recipe I wrote for simple syrup using our Butterfly Pea Flower Infused Honey. You could make this using that infusion or you could use our Virgin Clover Honey or another infusion adding the Butterfly Pea Flower Powder as an additional ingredient for coloring.
Instructions:
- 2oz Honey (plain or infused)
- 2oz Warm Water (about the same as your body temperature is nice)
- Mix honey and water together until dissolved.
- 1 tsp Butterfly Pea Flower Powder mixed in until all clumps are disolved.
- Now you have Simple Syrup!
- Add your simple syrup to mineral water for a bubbly colorful drink.
- Recommended: Squeeze fresh lime or lemon juice into your glass and observe the color change. Add a sprig of mint as a garnish for a little extra taste or crushed fresh fruit.
- Optional: turn this into a cocktail by adding your favorite liquor to this recipe.
This honey simple syrup will last for 2-3 weeks in the refrigerator.
