Our May recipe of the month isn’t just a drink; it’s a sensory experience! If you’ve never seen the color-changing witchcraft of a pea blossom gin and tonic, prepare to be amazed.
Butterfly pea blossoms have a very curious property: they turn drinks different colors depending on the liquid’s pH. Steeped in tea, the blossoms produce a lovely royal blue. If you leave them soaking in gin, you’ll get something between emerald blue and deep purple. Now here’s the fun part. When you add something strongly acidic—like, say, tonic water—the pea blossom extract will quickly slide through various shades of sapphire, plum, and lavender all the way to periwinkle or lilac. It’s truly the most visually stunning drink you’ll ever see!
If you want to offer your party guests a cocktail that’s as fun to mix as it is to drink, just set out the ingredients and let them enjoy their own chemistry experiment. Intoxicating fun!
DIRECTIONS (SERVES 1)
Fill a highball glass with ice. Then add:
1.5 oz. pea-infused gin (See instructions below for how to infuse your own gin. Pea-infused vodka works too,)
6 oz. of tonic water (sparkling wine is okay)
1 squeeze of fresh lime
Garnish with a sprig of rosemary or a slice of lemon or lime and that’s it! Easy-peasy lemon squeezy.
Instructions for infusing Gin
If you’re up for practicing a little DIY alchemy and infusing your own gin (or vodka), here’s how:
Use 1 tsp of dried butterfly pea flower tea for every 1.5 oz of gin you want to infuse. We like Beehive Jack Rabbit, Alpine Gin, or Madame Patterini from Ogden’s Own, but any good gin will do. Let the flowers soak in the gin for 2-12 hours, depending on how dark you want your gin to be. Then strain out any residue and you’re good to go.
PRO TIPS:
If you’re pressed for time and need to buy pre-infused gin, we recommend Holystone Cerulea. Holystone is an excellent Utah brand, and they donate a portion of all their Cerulea sales to research on breast cancer, an added bonus!
For a virgin version of this cocktail, Seedlip makes a non-alcoholic gin that’s popular. Our favorite, though, is Zero-Alcohol Gin made by Monday. Bear in mind that you can’t just soak your flowers in non-alcoholic gin because you won’t get nearly the same level of extraction. Instead, steep the flowers in hot water just as you would tea. Then add the infused tea water to your virgin gin and you’re all set.
When we serve this cocktail at events, we like to add ¾ oz of St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur to heighten the floral notes.
If you want to add even more enjoyment to the sensory experience, drop in an edible blossom or two, and spritz a little mist of rose water or orange blossom water into the glass before sipping.
In Thailand, where the butterfly pea grows, a common toast is “chon gâew” which means “crash glasses!”
Chon gâew!