Wonder what makes this Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transforming potion special?
There’s two reasons.
- While butterfly pea flower extract makes the liquid blue, all the other liquids we’re adding are clear. And yet the colour changes.
- Normally when you add other colour liquids together, they typically they become darker. But this drink becomes lighter, from dark blue to light pink-purple.
Butterfly pea flower extract is special because it reacts with the ph level of the liquid. So what makes the drink react is the citric acid and the lime juice.
Yes, you could bypass the salt and citric acid, but in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, ‘the particular salt’, is one of the ingredients that gives the potion the reaction it does. While we didn’t add the blood red liquor, this is one element we wanted to keep it authentic.
“I found what seemed to me a simple crystalline salt of a white colour. The phial, to which I next turned my attention, might have been about half-full of a blood-red liquor, which was highly pungent to the sense of smell, and seemed to me to contain phosphorus and some volatile ether. At the other ingredients I could make no guess.”
-Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
If you’re wanting to buy the butterfly pea flower extract (it’s called B’lure Flower Extract), whether it’s for this Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde transforming potion, or for your own concoction:
In the US, it’s available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2dFha0L
If you’re in Australia: https://www.bushtuckershop.com/collections/flower-extracts/products/blure-butterfly-pea-flower-extract?variant=1105278281
Other countries: https://www.wildhibiscus.com/pages/international-contacts
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transforming potion | Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup white sugar
- 2/3 cup hot water
- 1 cup cold water
- butterfly pea flower extract
- 1 pinch (1/16 tsp) fine salt
- 1 pinch (1/16 tsp) citric acid
- juice of half a lime
Instructions
- Mix together the sugar and water until sugar is dissolved.
- Set aside to chill.
- Pour into your serving glass, and top with the 1 cup of cold water.
- Drop in several drops of butterfly pea flower extract and stir so the liquid is completely dark blue.
- Mix together the salt and citric acid, sprinkle into the liquid and stir.
- Squeeze in the lime juice and stir again.
- Your dark blue drink will completely have transformed.
Notes
The first part of the recipe, up to and including the drops, can be prepped beforehand. Mix the salt and citric acid ahead of time, but don’t add the mixture and the lime juice to the drink until you’re in front of your guests!