Butterfly pea flower or better known as bunga telang here in Malaysia is widely used as natural dye for food especially for making Nyonya kuihs such as Nyonya chang, koo kueh, and pulut tekan.
This gorgeous blue flower extract is also used to make blue nasi lemak (coconut milk rice).
The bright blue petals impart its blue colour when steeped in hot water.
The usage of butterfly pea flower extract in food is not solely for aesthetic purposes, it also contains a whole lot of goodness.
Benefits of Butterfly Blue Pea Flower to our Body
Butterfly pea flower extract is known to detoxify the body, pacify the mind as well as improve skin texture and hair growth.
Butterfly blue pea flower grows easily and abundantly in our warm climate. We can also dry the flowers to be stored longer.
To dry them, just pluck and place the fresh flowers under the sun until completely dry.
Once dried, store them in an airtight container and refrigerate. They can keep for a very long time.
To use, pour boiling water onto the flowers until they start releasing their blue colour.
Today, I’m going to use this butterfly blue pea extract to make cheesecake.
Butterfly Blue Pea Flower Cheesecake Recipe
Ingredients
- 240 g crushed Oreo
- 100 g salted butter melted
- 840 g cream cheese room temperature
- 160 ml whipping cream
- 240 ml plain yogurt
- 180 g sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp dried blue pea flower
Instructions
- Melt butter in a double boiler or a bowl of hot water. Make sure the water does not enter the bowl of butter.
- In another bowl, pour melted butter into crushed Oreo and mix.
- Press crushed Oreo into a baking pan and refrigerate.
- Pour half of the whipping cream into a pot on low heat. Add dried blue pea flower and stir.
- Turn off the heat and let the flower steep for the colour to develop.
- Pour through strainer to remove the flowers.
- Using the same flower, heat the other half of whipping cream and strain the flowers out.
- Two shades of blue.
- Whisk cream cheese and sugar.
- Add vanilla extract, eggs and yogurt.
- Separate the cream cheese mixture into two portions.
- Add whipping cream and mix.
- Pour the lighter shade of cream cheese batter into baking pan with Oreo base.
- Pour the darker shade of cream cheese batter.
- Decorate the cheesecake.
- Bake at 190C for 60 minutes.
- Chill overnight before serving.
Here’s the tutorial video on how to bake this Butterfly Blue Pea Flower Cheesecake. It is so beautiful, it would be nice to bake this for our mothers this Mother’s Day.
