Blue, purple, pink, & lilac edible jewels! Pair butterfly pea tea with your favourite flavours, set, and enjoy!

We’ve found that agar powder (vegan) is the best option to use to set your creations. Butterfly pea tea jelly set with agar shears to form surfaces that resemble cut glass. But be forewarned …too much agar and the texture becomes unpleasant. Gelatine (non-vegan) dissolves at body temperature so, it’s great to use in butterfly pea jellies but more difficult to make jewels with.

A final agar concentration of ~0.5-0.7% (weight per volume) works well, which is 0.5-0.7g per 100mL of liquid – but you’ll need to experiment depending on what you use to flavour your jewels. Increase the agar percentage when adding acidic fruit juices or alcohol to the mix. Choose clear fruit juices where possible so that your jewels sparkle.

For colour-changing jewels, start with a butterfly pea tea flavour mix with a neutral pH. This way your jewels will slowly turn purple or pink when lemon/lime juice is squeezed over them – it doesn’t happen instantly, so you probably have 5-20 minutes to serve them. Remember to add more of the sweet component in your mixture in order to balance out the fresh lime juice.

Butterfly pea tea can also be used to intensify and control the coolness of red colours, for example, to deepen the colour of our cranberry jewels (see recipe & video below).

And as a bonus, butterfly pea reduces the absorption of sugars by blocking key enzymes – so your sweet treats are a little bit better for you than regular fruit jelly.