Continuing on with my trend of using Butterfly Pea Flowers for everything, I decided to create these butterfly pea flower cupcakes. Now, this isn’t my first foray into tea flavored cupcakes, just two months ago I made some Earl Grey Cupcakes with a blackberry mascarpone mousse ‘frosting’ that were really popular with my friends and family. This time I made some cupcakes that are blue, but don’t let the color put you off, it is all natural.
The key to these cupcakes is making a butterfly pea flower infused milk. It is also basically the recipe for my Star Wars Day spoof recipe ‘Luke Skywalker’s Blue Milk‘ That is all you need for the color in both the cupcake and the frosting. Now, after baking the insides are a little more green-blue , but that tends to happen when baking using natural dyes.
Making the butterfly pea flower infused milk is basically the same as making my butterfly pea flower infused vodka. You just heat up the liquid to a near simmer and then stir in the flowers. I let the flowers infuse into the hot milk for 10 minutes. While that is happening, I am using a stand mixer on paddle attachment to cream together the butter and sugar.
After you cream together the butter and sugar, drop in an egg one by one on slow speed. Then add the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt sifted together) a tablespoon at a time, while switching with a little bit of the infused milk. I do this on the lowest speed setting on my stand mixer since I don’t want to work the flour too much.
I find the batter has this beautiful robin’s egg blue, and I’m wondering if it is because something that was in the dry ingredients slightly altered the hue a bit green. Did you know that if you add acid to butterfly pea flower tea it will turn purple, and if you add tonic it will turn pink? Maybe the baking powder gave it a bit of a green tinge. It doesn’t matter though, it baked to a nice faded sky blue.
After the cupcakes bake at 175 Celsius or 350 Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, remove them and let them rest on the counter for 10 more minutes. As you can see in the picture above, they get a tad bit brown, but you can still see the blue color underneath.
The frosting is just a simple whip of confectioner’s sugar and some of the blue pea flower infused milk. I made way more frosting than I needed so hopefully the measurements down below aren’t too off, but it’s easy enough to whip up some more.
More Butterfly Pea Flower Recipes
- How to perfectly make butterfly pea flower tea
- Creme de Butterfly (Butterfly Pea Flower Liqueur)
- The Pelagic Cocktail
- Butterfly Pea Flower Infused Vodka
- Butterfly Pea Flower Entremet With Chocolate Sable
- Butterfly Pea Flower Jello
Butterfly Pea Flower Cupcakes
Equipment
- cupcake tray
- Stand Mixer or Hand Mixer
Ingredients
Butterfly Pea Flower Cupcakes
- 288 grams Flour AP
- 2 tsp Baking Powder
- 3/4 tsp Salt
- 226 grams Butter room temperature
- 350 grams Sugar granulated
- 3 Eggs large
- 300 ml Milk Butterfly Pea Flower infused
Butterfly Pea Flower Infused Milk
- 400 ml Milk 3.2% aka full fat
- 2 tsp Butterfly Pea Flowers high quality, about 10 flowers.
Butterfly Pea Flower Frosting
- 500 grams Confectioner's Sugar
- 50 ml Milk Butterfly Pea Flower Infused (you may need more milk to thin out the frosting, which is why I had you make 400 ml total for the cupcakes and the frosting
Instructions
- In a small pot bring the milk to a simmer. Once the simmer starts, add the butterfly pea flowers, turn off the heat, and let sit for 10 minutes. While it is sitting you can work on the cake.
- In a bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- In a stand mixer with paddle attachment (or a hand mixer) cream together the sugar and the butter. Slowly add the eggs one at a time. Then add some flour, then some infused milk, then flour etc… until all the wet and dry ingredients are together in the stand mixer. Once everything is combined, turn off the mixer. Do not over mix.
- Pour the Butterfly pea flower cupcakes batter into paper cupcake sleeves in a cupcake tin. Put in an oven preheated to 175 C or 350 F for 15 minutes.
- When done, remove and let rest on a counter until completely cool.
- To make the frosting use your stand mixer with a whisk attachment. Whip the sugar and the milk until you get a frosting. You can thin it out with a little more liquid as necessary.
Notes
