This Butterfly Pea Cake is super spongy, delicious, and the most gorgeous teal color. All you need to make it is natural butterfly pea powder and a few other ingredients. Let us show you how!
Butterfly Pea, also known as Blue Pea or Asiatic Pigeon Wings, is a bright deep blue flower found in South and Southeast Asia.
The flowers are incredibly rich in blue pigments called anthocyanins, also powerful antioxidants.
They are used in Thai and Malay cuisine to brew soothing blue tea and as a natural food coloring in many sweet and savory dishes.
These wonderful flowers are so versatile, you can use them in so many recipes to add a pop of color!
You can find butterfly peas as dried flowers or as a fine blue-purple powder. Your local Asian grocery store should stock a few, but you can also easily find them online.
Butterfly pea powder is ideal for making this cake as you can easily add it to the cake batter.
A tablespoon of powder is enough to give the dough a bright blue tint. However, you can increase or decrease the amount to get a different shade of blue that you like the most.
Keep in mind that the cake butter will turn a slightly blue-green color as the blue butterfly pea powder mixes with yellowish ingredients like flour and eggs.
If you already have dried butterfly pea flowers at home, you don’t need to buy the power just for this recipe.
Instead, just use them to make blue milk and then add them to the cake batter. You can follow our butterfly pea latte recipe for exact amounts and directions.
For the other ingredients, we used classic biscuit ingredients like flour, baking powder, and sugar, but replaced cow’s milk and butter with plant-based milk and coconut oil, respectively.
So our blue cake recipe contains no milk or butter and is 100% dairy-free.
We also tried making the cake without eggs for a vegan option but it was too dense.
To make our vegan baked goods, we often use a little vinegar and baking soda for extra boost. However, because butterfly peas are very sensitive to pH changes, they turn green when mixed with vinegar or baking soda. Even baking soda changes color, so you can’t use too much of it.
So the vinegar and baking soda trick was a no go for this blue cake, and we had to rely on eggs to make the cake fluffy and spongy.
If you want to try making it vegan, try replacing the yolk with flaxseed egg and the egg white with whipped aquafaba.
Once done, you can enjoy this gorgeous Butterfly Pea Cake as is or dust with powdered sugar for a pretty finish.
You can even slice it and fill it with jam and custard. Check out the tips at the end of the recipe for inspiration!
And if you’re looking for more delicious Butterfly Pea Powder recipes, we think you’ll love these Blue Chia Pudding, Swirled Butterfly Pea Smoothie, and Blue Cookies. Try it!