Co-op Kids: Pink Lemonade Experiment
As summer starts showing up more and more, both in the forecast and in the produce department, I find myself craving icy thirst quenching drinks. My coffee routine shifts to iced Americanos and cold brew, I start adding electrolytes to my water, and I crave limeade. I was recently gifted a bag of butterfly pea flowers, and it's made everything beverage concoction more fun! If you have never heard of butterfly pea flowers, perhaps you've seen unicorn lemonade or another variation. Essentially, it's a flower that creates a dark blue tea.
The blue color comes from the antioxidant anthocyanin, similar to what is in purple cabbage. In culinary school we did a fun little experiment cooking different vegetables in acidic, basic and neutral cooking liquids to see how it affected the end color. If you've ever dyed Easter eggs with food-based dyes, you might have had similar experiences. For the blue butterfly pea tea, when you add something acidic, usually lemon or lime juice, it lightens and turns magenta to even pink. The following recipe is more of a guide and can be a fun science experiment for kids.
First, you'll want to make a simple syrup with the butterfly pea flowers. Bring equal parts sugar and water to a boil in a small bot, stir until the sugar dissolves and turn off the heat. Add the flowers and let steep. When the simple syrup has cooled, it should be a dark blue color. Strain the flowers and store in a small jar in the fridge. It should keep for at least 2 weeks refrigerated.
Next, you'll need your citrus juice. I think you could make this with lemon or lime and it would be delicious. Zest your citrus using a micro-plane or the smallest holes on your grater. Juice the fruit using any kind of juicer, from the fancy electric versions, a wooden citrus reamer to good old fashioned hand squeezing. Combine the juice with the zest. So much citrus flavor is in the oils in the zest, so you'll be getting a good amount of flavor from including it. Don't make the mistake that I've made too many times to count, where I juice a lemon and then realize that the recipe calls for the zest, so I find myself trying to grate the squished, deformed peels. In fact, it's a great habit to get into zesting citrus anytime you use the juice in a recipe. I keep a tiny jar of zest in my freezer and add lemon zest to muffin and quick bread batters or marinades.
The fun part is all in the mixing. This is also where I fess up that this isn't really a recipe, because you can add as much of each component to get the perfect lemonade for you.
I like to start with glasses full of ice. Add a small amount of the blue simple syrup. Add sparkling or still water to the glass. Then, add the lemon or lime juice and watch as it turns from blue to magenta. Depending on the ratio of simple syrup to juice, it could even turn pink. Of course, if you didn’t have the butterfly pea flowers, you could still make a tasty customized glass of lemonade by combining lemon juice with simple syrup and still or sparkling water. It will still cool you down and taste just as delicious.
For a more scientific approach to the color changing magic of butterfly pea flower, you can make regular tea by steeping the flowers instead of making a simple syrup. Pour this tea into several clear glasses. Gather different ingredients from your kitchen, vinegar and baking soda are obvious choices, but don't forget baking powder. Try some fun comparisons like cow's milk versus oat milk, pickle brine or apple juice. Once you've gathered your different ingredients, guess whether they are acidic or basic. Adding them to the glass, the acidic substances will turn the tea purple then pink depending on acidity. A base ingredient will turn the tea green and even yellow. Were your guesses all correct on which substances were acids and bases?
cover photo: "Huckleberry Lavender Lemonade" by MarxFoods.com is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0