An iced coffee that looks like the dirt and sky! This drink is perfect for Earth day or when you want to be a little more creative with your coffee. It tastes like a slightly earthier iced latte, and it’s gorgeous.

This drink is so easy to make and tastes super creamy and flavorful. You only need 4 ingredients and less than 10 minutes to make a beautiful drink that also tastes good!

Here’s how to make a blue dalgona latte at home!

What is Butterfly Pea Tea?

Butterfly pea tea is a non-caffeinated herbal tea made from butterfly pea tea flowers from a pea plant native to South East Asia. It’s famous for its beautiful blue and purple hue before and after steeping in water.

It’s been used as a natural dye for centuries but most recently became trendy on social media for its vibrant color. Blue is one of the rarest colors to occur naturally in nature, so seeing something natural that blue is bound to spark people’s curiosity.

A really cool characteristic of butterfly pea tea is that it turns blue to pink when you add acid. Just like that one pH science experiment you did in school, this is the exact same principle. The tea has a high amount of anthocyanins, water-soluble chemicals that act as a pH indicator, meaning they change color according to the pH level.

Butterfly pea tea is blue at neutral pH, then slowly turns purple, pink, then red the more acidic it becomes.

What Does Butterfly Pea Tea Taste Like?

Not gonna lie, butterfly pea tea tastes like dirt. It doesn’t taste very good on its own, even though it looks like it should taste fruity or like blue raspberry! In nicer terms, it has a very earthy and a slight astringency.

Honestly, people use this tea more for the color and appearance rather than the taste. Most butterfly pea tea drinks sold are lemonades or milk teas that have stronger flavors added that mask the taste.

It’s delicious when it’s paired with something sour and sweet or creamy and sweet. I don’t recommend drinking it by itself because it has a strong flavor.

What Are the Benefits of Butterfly Pea Tea?

Although butterfly pea tea tastes… very earthy by itself, it has some great health benefits! This further reinforces the stereotype that food that tastes bad is good for you.

Butterfly pea flowers are a rich source of bioactive components that offer antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-allergy properties. It has so many benefits that it’s often categorized as a medicinal herb in Asian countries. The flowers themselves also have a lot of fiber, which is sometimes used in fortified cereals.

Some say it helps prevent cancer, improve cognitive function, lower blood pressure, etc., which sounds too good to be true, but do your own research to make that judgment!

What is Dalgona?

Dalgona is not from Korea and also has been around for a while!

In the 90s, a shipbuilder named Leong Kam Hon created whipped coffee at his cafe, Hon Kee Cafe, in Macau to strengthen his arm after a work injury.

Whipped coffee is made from instant coffee, water, and sugar, beaten with a whisk or fork until it triples in size and is light brown. It’s served on top of a cup of ice and milk, and when mixed into the drink, it becomes a sweet, creamy, and frothy drink.

It flew under the radar until 2021, when it blew up on social media after a Korean actor, Jung Il-woo, ordered it on a TV show called Stars’ Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant while filming a mukbang in Macau.

After that, whipped coffee spread virally in South Korea and eventually flooded Tiktok, with thousands of people making this coffee beverage at home in quarantine.

Initially, this drink was called hand-beaten coffee. But the actor described it as tasting like the dalgona candy he had as a kid, and the name stuck.

How to Make Whipped Coffee

As mentioned, dalgona or whipped coffee is equal parts instant coffee, sugar, and hot water whisked until soft, fluffy foam forms. Start by boiling water, then add all the ingredients into a small cup or bowl.

You can use a whisk or fork to try and hand beat the coffee yourself, but it takes a lot of effort and constant beating to get it frothy. However, the more convenient way is to use a handheld frother or electric whisk to achieve the same result.

While you could use room temperature or cold water to make dalgona, hot water helps incorporate everything easily and quickly. Dalgona is quite fragile; once you make the dalgona foam, it will eventually dissolve into a liquid if you let it sit. But if your dalgona is softer than normal, it’s okay, you can just call it soft dalgona, haha.

The faster you can dissolve everything and whip, the better!

Food Science Break: The instant coffee’s protein plus sugar is the perfect formula for a soft, fluffy foam. Like sweet cream, the protein or structures in the instant coffee trap air when whisked, and the sugar helps stabilize the foam.

How to Make a Blue Dalgona Latte

To make a blue dalgona latte at home, you’ll need:

• Instant coffee
• Sugar
• Water
• Milk
• Butterfly pea flowers

Blue Dalgona Latte Recipe

First, steep butterfly pea flowers in hot water for 3-5 minutes until you get a bright blue tea. You want to make a concentrate so that the drink is not diluted but blue enough to turn the milk blue.

Then, make your whipped coffee by adding instant coffee, sugar, and hot water to a bowl or cup and beating it until you get stiff peaks. This means the foam should hold its shape if you remove your whisk.

Mix your butterfly pea tea into milk until it turns blue. If it’s not as blue as you want, brew more butterfly pea tea and add it to the milk.

Add ice and butterfly pea milk tea to a separate cup, then top with your whipped dalgona coffee.

Mix and enjoy!

Other Ways to Make Blue Milk

If you don’t have butterfly pea tea or don’t like the taste, there are other ways you can make blue milk by using:

• Blue spirulina
• Red cabbage
• Blueberries (this will give you a dark blueish purple)

Or combine natural yellow and green food colorings to create blue, like saffron (expensive), pandan, etc.

Other Dalgona Coffee Flavors

This drink is a more creative take on the popular dalgona coffee, but there are plenty of other fun flavors you can try, including:

• Pumpkin spice dalgona
• Vanilla dalgona
• Honey dalgona
• Cinnamon dalgona
• Maple syrup dalgona
• Condensed milk dalgona
• Butterfly pea dalgona

And the list goes on! Experimenting with different flavors and sweeteners is super easy, so go crazy!

Tips

Here are some tips on making a cool blue dalgona latte at home:

• If your dalgona coffee is not becoming fluffy, you may need a stronger electric whisk, more sugar, or a different instant coffee. The mixture should turn into a light brown foam relatively fast after whipping. Make sure you’re using equal parts of each ingredient!
• Try adding different sweeteners or flavored syrups to give your drink a different taste. Vanilla syrup works really well with both coffee and butterfly pea tea!