If you ever felt like like impressing your friends and perhaps making them think you're some sort of wizard, you'll love this easy to make syrup. Dried butterfly pea flowers can be found in most tea shops. It's also known as "blue tea". For this recipe we are using only the dried out flowers, unblended with other teas. If you chose to have a flavoured syrup, go ahead and use a blended tea that contains the butterfly pea flower. Butterfly pea flowers don't add much flavour by themselves, they have a light earthy taste but nothing really astonishing. Its best qualities are in the colours it produces. It will start off with a blue hue, depending on how long you decide to steep your tea. The longer you steep, the darker it will become.

The true magic happens when you introduce something acidic to the mix, like lemon or lime juice for example. This turns the tea into a beautiful Violet or indigo colour. just like magic. We tool this tea and made it into a syrup by adding equal party sugar to the tea. This sweet syrup is great for making collins style cocktails or just a simple sweetened clear liquor highball. For the real colour transformation to take place, i recommend adding the citrus (acidic juices) to your cocktail last to really wow everyone looking as they will see the transformation in amazement.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tbsp dried butterfly pea flower

DIRECTIONS

1. Add water to a saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a simmer.
2. Add sugar.
3. Stir until sugar is entirely dissolved.
4. Remove from heat and add 2 tablespoons of dried butterfly pea flower.
5. Let steep for 10 minutes.
6. Transfer to an airtight container (glass works best) and let cool.
7. Refrigerate.

Keeps for two to three weeks.