Butterfly pea flower lemonade is delicious and refreshing homemade lemonade, made with freshly squeezed lemons, stevia, and dried butterfly pea flower blossoms.
How gorgeous are these dried butterfly pea flowers?!
I recently tried butterfly pea flower tea for the first time and fell in love with the rich blue color from the dried butterfly pea flower blossoms. Not just for drinking, you can also use this brewed tea in recipes for a natural food colorant, a much healthier option to food dyes.
What Are Butterfly Pea Flowers?
The base of this lemonade recipe is a blue colored tea which is actually a non-caffeinated Tisane, made from the infusion of plant material in hot water. This tea is 100% organic and all-natural, with deep roots in the cultures of Thailand and Malaysia. The blue flowering plant that produces these blossoms is called Clitoria ternatea and native to South East Asia. The butterfly pea flower is used in many ways, including baking, cooking, drinking, health products, shampoos, and even decorating in some Asian cultures. It also has been utilized in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine.
How To Make Butterfly Pea Flower Tea
- Boil one and a half cups of water
- Add a heaping tablespoon of dried butterfly pea flower blossoms
- Steep for 3-5 minutes, until it turns bright blue
- Strain the tea
- Flavor with citrus wedges and sweetener of choice, if desired
The great thing about making this tea, is unlike regular tea it does not get bitter the longer it brews, so it's very forgiving if you forget about it while doing other things. Which happens to me often...busy mom brain. 😉
You can impress your kids by doing a neat experiment with butterfly pea flowers. My daughter and I created this beautiful, sugar-free, homemade lemonade recipe using freshly steeped tea. When you add lemon juice to the blue tisane, it turns a vibrant purple color. The change in the pH from the citrus acid causes a change in color. This purple lemonade recipe is not only fun to make and an educational science experiment for the kiddos, but really tasty too!
The tea is not very flavorful on its own, so it really needs the fresh citrus for an added flavor boost.
Other Uses For Butterfly Pea Flower Tea
More Favorite Lemonade Recipes
Strawberry Lemonade {No Refined Sugar}
All-Natural Sugar-Free Lemonade
*Note: This post was originally published in March 2014. It was updated throughout. The tasty recipe remains the same. 🙂
Butterfly Pea Flower Lemonade
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups boiling water
- 1 tablespoon dried butterfly pea flowers use a heaping tablespoon here
- 1 packet stevia
- 2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice more or less to taste
- ice to fill the glass
Instructions
- Boil water and pour 1 ½ cups into a mug
- Add pea flower blossoms in a basket filter or tea sac and steep for 4-8 minutes
- Allow tea to cool and pour into a glass
- Add stevia and lemon juice
- Watch the tea turn a bright purple color!
- Add ice to fill glass and enjoy
Nutrition
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Emily Smith
What a gorgeous drink!! This would be so lovely to serve at a Spring garden party!! Thanks for the inside scoop on blue chai 🙂
Lois Luckovich
Thanks for this recipe, if I can get dried butterfly pea flowers where I live I'll try it!
Amee Livingston
You're welcome, Lois! They should have them on Amazon if you can't find them locally.