Cooking with Botanicals: Blue Butterfly Pea Flower

The blue butterfly pea flower is native to Indonesia where it is used as a medicinal plant and a natural food coloring. This gentian blue flower has a few spectacular uses in the kitchen, and when combined with certain ingredients its color shifts to vivid violet. During class, we’ll make a blue butterfly tea to enjoy while we discuss how to use this dramatic ingredient to best effect, while making your own blue butterfly pea sugar to transform recipes at home. During class we’ll talk recipes and the ways you can use this magical flower in the kitchen.

In many parts of the world, the Ternatea flower has become an invasive species that escaped from cultivation. Thus, if you’re not growing it in its native environment, take care to keep it contained.