Butterfly Pea Flower Soap Recipe
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How to use butterfly pea flowers, a natural and plant-based ingredient, to create baby blue soap bars. They’re truly beautiful! Use this blue butterfly pea flower soap recipe to make them yourself at home using an easy soap base.
This is a simple melt-and-pour soap recipe that gives you stunning light blue soap bars using a natural colorant. It’s easy, too, since you’ll be working with a pre-made soap base and just a couple of other ingredients. Other things it has going for it is that it’s quick to make, has very little prep, and you don’t have to worry about handling lye. In as little as forty minutes, you can have soap made that you can even use on the actual day.
The magic ingredient in this blue soap recipe is butterfly pea flowers. These are edible flowers from the clitoria ternatea plant from southeast Asia. In their homeland, they’re used as a natural food colorant and in Ayurvedic medicine. More recently, they’ve been introduced to the West where you can sometimes find them used in drinks at trendy bars. Though they don’t tend to be sold fresh, they’re relatively easy to come by in dried form.
The stunning natural color that you get from butterfly pea flowers is a wonder to behold. If you’ve had experience with these edible flowers before, it’s likely been from an electric blue drink. Or perhaps a gorgeous mulberry shade! If you add an acid such as lime juice to blue drinks colored with butterfly pea flowers they change color. From blue to shades of purple to magenta right before your eyes! The blue color is the most amazing though! So magical, in fact, that many a soapmaker has tried to use this natural colorant to color handmade soap. Unfortunately, most of their results have ended up turning beige or no color at all.
Butterfly Pea Flowers as a Natural Soap Colorant
That’s certainly the case when using butterfly pea flowers in any cold process soap recipe. I understand that you can add it to hot process soap (typically made in a slow cooker) with some success. You’d add it after the cook to avoid having it come into contact with ley. However, the initial blue color that you get fades into a gray-blue a bit reminiscent of woad soap. It fades even further after that point.
However, you can add butterfly pea flower extract to pre-made soap bases, called melt and pour soap, with better success! If you keep the soap stored in a dark place, it’s baby blue color can last for many months before fading. Melt and pour soap is generally not 100% natural, but it’s skin-safe, easy to work with, and great for beginners. It’s also a way to make soap without handling lye or lye solution.
Melt and Pour Soap is Easy to Use
Most from-scratch soapmakers (either CP or HP) don’t work with melt and pour at all. For me, it’s a guilty little pleasure since it’s so easy to work with! So quick and easy that you can make several small batches of soap in an hour or so. So satisfying and entertaining and the clean-up is negligible too.
To use melt and pour soap, you first chop it into small blocks. Then you melt it, add extra ingredients if you choose, and pour it into molds. Melt and pour soap is the type of soap that you can get as soap gift kits during the holidays. It’s safe for children to use too!
There’s one main thing to consider, though. Melt and pour soap bases are not natural. They are made of both soap and synthetic ingredients such as SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate). So if you’re after making all-natural blue soap, stick to making this indigo soap recipe. For a blue-grey soap, you can use this Cambrian blue clay soap. Both are cold-process soap recipes that you make from scratch.
Butterfly Pea Flowers as a Natural Colorant
To extract the blue color from butterfly pea flowers, you first need to infuse the dried flowers in water. This can be a tricky area since you’re not really supposed to add water to melt and pour soap. The reason is that it can cause glycerine dew to form on the bars after they’ve hardened. Tiny droplets of moisture that are harmless but wet and sometimes sticky due to their being vegetable glycerin. I was inspired by another recipe that uses water to try using butterfly pea flower tea. Fortunately, it worked!
I think that the trick is to reduce the amount of water in the melt and pour soap. You can do this by heating the melt and pour soap to encourage some of the water to evaporate out. I’ve included that step in the instructions below.
One thing that you’ll also notice when working with butterfly pea flower tea in soap is that it can start out a vivid blue but change to light blue. That’s because the extract is a true blue in a neutral pH substance, like water. It changes to light blue in a really alkaline environment, like soap base. No matter how much butterfly pea flower tea you add, you’ll only ever get light blue. The color of the soap will also fade over time, especially if the soap is stored in a bright place. Keep your soaps in a dark cupboard for best color preservation.
Further Tips Before Making This Recipe
Butterfly pea flowers need a tropical to sub-tropical environment to grow and are native to equatorial parts of Asia. It’s been introduced elsewhere though and where it grows, you’ll see it as a creeping vine with deep blue flowers. If you’re not able to grow or buy it fresh, you’ll need to buy it dried. Keep an eye out on the ingredients though. If you buy butterfly flower tea it will often be mixed with lemongrass for flavor. What you want should have only one ingredient listed: “pure dried butterfly pea flower”. You can sometimes find it as blue butterfly pea powder, but whole flowers are probably better for this project.
Another thing is that there are A LOT of different types of melt and pour soap bases. They come in two colors though — white or clear — and you’ll need an opaque white base for this recipe. The type that I used had added shea butter in the recipe but honestly, you can use any type. I did try butterfly pea flower tea in a clear soap base but wasn’t impressed enough to want to share it.
More Naturally Colored Soap
This butterfly pea flower soap recipe is as beautiful as it is easy to make! If you’ve had your appetite whetted for more, there are PLENTY of natural soap recipes for you to explore on Lovely Greens. Here are a few to get you started:
- Indigo Soap Recipe (natural blue soap)
- How to Make Old Soap Bars New Again
- Calendula Infused-Oil Soap Recipe (natural yellow soap)
- Cucumber Soap Recipe with Real Cucumber
- Comprehensive List of Natural Soap Colorants
Butterfly Pea Flower Soap Recipe
Equipment
- Heat-proof jug, jar, or bowl
Ingredients
- 24.7 oz White melt-and-pour soap base (700 g)
- 3 dried butterfly pea flowers
- 2 TBSP Water
- 2 tsp Ylang ylang essential oil (optional)
- Isopropyl (or rubbing) alcohol (in the spray bottle)
Instructions
- Prepare the butterfly pea flower tea at least half an hour in advance. I made mine the day before and refrigerated it. Place three butterfly pea flowers in a cup and pour over two Tablespoons of scalding hot water. The water will turn blue immediately but will intensify over the next five minutes or longer.
- Leave the tea to cool on the counter and pull the flower petals from the water before using. Squeeze as much liquid from the flowers as you can. If you make the tea in advance, you can refrigerate it for up to three days.
- Measure and then roughly cut the soap base into 1" cubes and place them in a heat-proof container.
- Melt the soap base in the microwave (or using a double boiler) until it's fully melted. Stir every minute or so with a spoon or silicone spatula. In the microwave, my base took about five minutes to melt completely.
- When fully melted, place the container of soap base on the counter and stir in a Tablespoon or less butterfly pea flower tea. Stir well.
- Place the soap mixture back in the microwave and heat for a further five minutes, stirring every minute or so. If you're using a double-boiler, leave the soap to heat through for 25-30 minutes. This step is to help encourage water to evaporate from the soap base.
- Place the melted blue soap base on the counter and cool to 140F (60C) before adding the essential oil and stirring it in thoroughly.
- Stray the mold(s) with the alcohol and pour the soap into the mold(s) immediately after stirring in the essential oil. If you see bubbles on the surface, spritz them lightly with alcohol.
- Although optional, you can lightly decorate the top of the soap with dried butterfly pea flowers. You can either lie them on the soap's surface before it hardens or add them later*.
- Allow the soap to cool and harden for several hours before popping it out of the mold(s)*. Don't be tempted to put the molds in the fridge since that can cause issues with glycerin dew as well. Cut loaves into bars of whatever size you'd like and use the soap immediately if you like. Pre-made soap bases do not need to be cured like from-scratch soap recipes.
- Store these soaps in an airtight container immediately after they've cooled. This will help reduce the chances of the bars developing glycerin dew. Also, keep them in a dark place to minimize color fading. In bright places, the soap's color will begin to fade over the course of a week or two.
Notes
Hi again Lovely Greens!
I LOVE butterfly pea flowers, both for making teas/lemonade and now soap making!
Most melt and pour soap bases contain ingredients that break my acne prone skin out (coconut, palm, other comedogenic oils etc.). If I were to make a cold process soap that is opaque white (like your eco-friendly recipe?) then use that after it cures as the soap base in this recipe instead of the premade melt and pours out there, would that work? Would it still turn that beautiful blue color in the photo? So SO sorry if you’ve already answered these questions somewhere else on here!
Thanks so much! Blessings!
Baily
Hi Baily, I’ve not tried it as a rebatch soap recipe (as you imply) but if you do, please let me know. One way to get that soft baby blue using natural colorants is by infusing the liquid oil in a soap recipe with indigo. I go through that process in my indigo soap recipe.
Oh good to know about the indigo! I’ll definitely read up on that post! :) Yes, I just realized I’d technically be doing a rebatch with an opaque white soap! I’d just be making my suggested “base” recipe (the oils used for the herbal rosemary mint soap with babassu subbed for coconut and a split of apricot kernel, peaches kernel and olive oil subbed for the sweet almond) and either color the white base during that process or I’ll just let the base soap cure and then just follow the melt and pour directions.
My last question would be: if I use/make a white opaque base soap using the cold process method, and wanted to add the butterfly pea color during that process instead of waiting for the base soap to cure and then doing a melt and pour, could I still add the color as a tea? If so, do I add it to cooled lye water (like sodium lactate) since tea is water based or add it another way? If not, could I use butterfly pea powder instead and add it to a tablespoon of oil (like in the herbal rosemary mint soap) and then add it to the rest of the heated oil mixture? Or maybe even add the butterfly tea to the tablespoon of oil and use an ECOCERT/COSMOS approved emulsifier to blend the tea/water and oil, or do emulsifiers do funky things in CP soap?
I actually plan on doing this over the weekend or on Monday, and I’ll DEFINITELY let you know how it goes! :)
Thanks so much for all the help and for all the help you offer to others!
Blessings!
Baily
It look’s great! I’m going to make this gorgeous soap!
Only one question: a quick maceration of the flowers in a light oil instead of water infusion would alter the soap color? I’m used to add small amounts of oils to melt&pour bases sulfate-free, never add watery infusions…
It’s best to be very conservative when adding water to m&p. However, it’s the only way to get the lovely blue color from butterfly pea flowers. The color is water soluble, not oil soluble.
Great idea.can we use butterfly pea flower powder in cold process soap to get the blue color.if yes then should we add it in lye ,or use flower tea
Unfortunately, the blue color doesn’t come through in cold process soap making.
Lovely idea! I use the flowers for iced tea. Also, you can change the color by adjusting the pH of the water (more acidic and it will turn more pink).