I’ve spoken before about my distain for store bought sugar syrups, with their sickly imitation flavours and chemical laden bullshit. Instead, I like to push those learning the cocktail trade into knocking up my their own ingredients when requiring an outlandish injection of colour or interesting piquancy to their mixed drinks. So, with this in mind, let me introduce you to my favourite dash of purple with this super easy to make, Butterfly Pea Simple Syrup!
Butterfly Pea Simple Syrup
Equipment
Ingredients
- 240g (8oz) Water
- 200g (7oz) Sugar
- 12g (½oz) Dried Butterfly Pea Flowers
Instructions
- Put 240g of top quality water, 200g of white sugar and 12g of dried butterfly pea flowers in a small saucepan and place on a low heat
- Bring the mixture to boil, and leave simmer for 5 minutes
- After the 5 minutes are up, turn off the heat and allow the syrup to cool
- Once cooled, transfer to a suitable storage container, refrigerate, and use within 1 Month
- Use this new found nectar to turn anything you can think of blue, or magically purple if you introduce a little citrus
Applications for your Butterfly Pea Simple Syrup
In Cocktail Making
Despite what many people may believe, the world of cocktails is a story of two parts. In order to make a successful drink, you must balance both aesthetics and flavour. Otherwise, you may end up with a fancy as hell looking cocktail that tastes like garbage, a tasty glass of bland liquid, or you screw everything up and heroically concoct a vomit worthy beaker of brown sludge that will make a mockery of the contents of your drinks cupboard.
One of the easiest tricks of the trade involves using a striking sugar syrup to add a spot of colour to proceedings, just try not to add too many, otherwise the whole thing will revert to brown again. So, with this in mind, a Butterfly Pea simple syrup will perform a little magic on any drinks that have a natural white or clear hue, such as a Lemon Drop Martini, a Tom Collins, a Mojito or even a Margarita. In addition, you can attempt to layer the effect by carefully adding this exotic potion to the drink (syrups tend to sink, then disperse), for the willing test subject to stir themselves before drinking.
Making Food-things Stand Out
Here, we will go a bit outfield and start thinking outside the box and take a look at how it will allow you to make food a bit more eye catching, especially if you have ever accidentally made an entire meal of only white components. As such, you can add this magnificent little additive to a white bread recipe instead of regular sugar, or drop it into a sponge cake to make it stand out from the rest. In addition, adventurous types can add a touch to a coconut curry, or even use it to make rice look more interesting. So, go knock yourself out and see what you can do with this fabulous new ingredient for making food look more spectacular.
Leave a Reply