Herbal Spotlight: Butterfly Pea Flowers with Winter Blues Pie Recipe

Butterfly Pea Flowers [Clitoria ternatea] provide gorgeous natural color, as well as many benefits for the mind & body.
Trade your Winter Blues for some natural Botanical Blue & brighten things up as we explore these amazing flowers & their benefits-- & have some fun playing with them in a recipe for a blue rice & custard pie too!

Adaptogens are substances that are considered to help the body resist stressors of all kinds, whether physical, chemical or biological, and to exert a normalizing effect upon bodily processes.

More than just a pretty face, Butterfly Pea flowers are a powerful Herbal Ally! Native to Southeast Asia, these flowers have been used for centuries as a memory enhancer, brain booster, anti-stress & calmative agent; they are staples of Chinese & Ayurvedic medicine. Clitoria ternatea are considered to be adaptogenic.  They are packed full of antioxidants, flavonoids,& peptides, as well as anti-inflammatory compounds, particularly anthocyanin, which are believed to support ​

cardiovascular health. They are also traditionally used cosmetically to stimulate hair growth, & to support glowing skin & graceful ageing. ​

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Butterfly pea flowers are most often used as a tea & have an earthy-green flavor similar to that of green tea. The dried flowers, when steeped, release a deep indigo-blue color. Due to this, they are often used as a natural food coloring agent in Malasian, Thai, & Burmese cooking. Most interestingly, this color is pH sensitive, producing a wide variety of shades ranging from fuchsia to bright blue-green as it is exposed to different ingredient’s pHs! 

Image: Ama Grow. pinterest.com/pin/778770960548743102/

My 'Comfort & Joy' Adaptogenic Zero-Proof Cocktail

​This makes the herb VERY popular for cocktails! As anyone who knows me would expect, I have had quite a ball playing with the effects: Delighting my niece Phoebe [missing you peanut!] with “Electric Lemonades'' & also using them as an ingredient in one of the Adaptogenic Zero-Proof Cocktails I crafted for the Rocky Horror Picture Show at Cupacity last October being two of my favorites. 

BUT, as butterfly pea flowers are most often used for drinks, I decided to present you with a non-beverage recipe in this post, instead sharing a recipe for a wild-looking rice custard pie with rose & cardamom. It is super-easy to make, absolutely delicious, & outrageously colored! Seriously, you will not believe it is achieved with a natural colorant when you see it-- the color is not properly captured by my pictures!

Before we get going, just a few little things: With this recipe, I was aiming for an aqua shade & based my recipe amounts for the herb on this. The more butterfly pea flower you use & the longer you steep it, the deeper shade of blue you will get. I prefer to steep my milk & half & half overnight the day before baking, but you can get away with steeping it for 2 hours or so or even heat it with the dried flowers to color it instead. Additionally, if you say add lemon juice to the rice when it's cooking-- the pH change 

Steeping my milk overnight

will shift your color to a vivid pink, SO there are endless ways to play with this. Finally, this rice custard pie is a sliceable dessert, served more like brownies than traditional pie. When baked, the rice settles to the bottom with the custard layer forming the top. It is delicious served warm, but many people prefer to chill it in the fridge before serving. The custard top, like all puddings & custard, will form a ‘skin’ which will oxidize & darken. Personally, I prefer to peel it off before serving to better enjoy the color effect of the butterfly pea in it. Here we go!

Winter Blues Pie

3 TBS Dried Butterfly Pea Flowers  
2 Cups Milk [whole, skim, your choice] 
1 Cup Half & Half 
1 Cup White Rice 6 Large Eggs 
¾ Cup Sugar 
1 TBS Vanilla Extract 
½ Teaspoon Cardamom Extract [or 1 tsp ground cardamom] 
½ - 1 Teaspoon Rosewater  [to your taste]
Pinch of Sea Salt

DAY BEFORE: Add 2 tablespoons of dried butterfly pea flowers to a quart jar & add the milk & half & half. Pop it in the fridge to steep overnight. Swirling/shaking occasionally.
DAY OF BAKING: I like to cook my rice in a rice-cooker, but stovetop is just fine as well. Measure out 1 ½ cups boiling water into a liquid measuring cup, add 1 TBS butterfly pea flowers & stir. Allow it to steep to develop the desired shade of deep blue. I let mine go about 5 minutes to give you an idea. Strain out the flowers & throw them in your compost. Use your blue water to cook your cup of rice, then set it aside to cool. Meanwhile, strain your milk/half & half combo, & prepare your other ingredients. Preheat your oven to 350. Grease an 8” x 8” pan.  Beat your eggs with the sugar. Add your blue milk & flavorings mixing until smooth & completely combined. Stir in the rice, breaking up any clumps. Pour into the prepared baking pan. Bake until a butter knife inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 - 40 minutes. It is easy to scorch the bottom, so do the knife check even if it still looks loose! Remove from oven. Slice into squares & enjoy! You can serve it warm or allow to cool & chill it in the fridge before serving. Again, I like to remove the top skin before serving.

Images do not properly capture the strange shade of aqua here!

​And there you have it -- a violently un-natural looking naturally colored dessert! Sure to thrill the child [or child-at-heart] in your life. The blue milk is particularly fun for Star Wars fans [on its own or baked into this dessert]  I like the blue-blue of doing it this way, but adding an acid to the rice would make it more pink-purple & give interesting tonal coloration. The color shift is really fun to play with! 
​

More than just the sheer strangeness of the colors, remember you are getting the herbal benefits of the butterfly pea flowers. This Herbal Ally provides so many benefits for mind & body. It is definitely worth adding to your own tea selection or Herbal Apothecary. 
I hope you enjoyed this look at these amazing flowers & this silly-fun recipe. It is likely I will post some drink recipes made with this herb in the future too. Let me know how you like to use Butterfly Pea & what color combo you create! Check out our very special skin & hair care products crafted with this Herbal Ally.  
Until next time--Stay safe &  #StopAndEatTheFlowers