Mint Syrup

I have been a fortunate gardener this year and have a robust, fruitful garden. It has less to do with effort, and more to do with nutrient-rich, sandy soil. For the first time I added a Spearmint plant to my herb garden. Little did I know that growing mint is the easy part, in fact it’s hard to have a small mint plant and needs to be cut back as to not overtake a garden. I love the looks of it and enjoy smelling the leaves, but other than that I did not have any plans for the mint.

Browsing Pinterest for garden ideas, I stumbled upon a recipe for Simple Mint Syrup from Heather Diane Hardison from Illustrated Bites. She is a talented artist and even has a book out with her food illustrations, definitely going on my wish list. You can find the recipe for Mint Syrup here.

I am not much of a recipe follower and tend to not measure. I cut this in half as I was not sure what I actually would do with the syrup at first.

I followed the recipe suggestions, chopping mint, then boiling it with water and sugar. I modified it slightly by adding a few drops of vanilla extract to the mix. I have these small spice jars from World Market I have slowly been finding use for and thought this would work since I didn’t make that much syrup.

I drained it into a Pyrex measuring cup first to let it cool down and make it easier to pour into the small jars.

The next order of business was consumption!

I had some leftover coffee sitting in the pot, so decided to whip up my own “frappe”. I added some half & half, ice, the mint syrup and a few mini chocolate chips to my Nutri Ninja blender. The drink came out nice and frothy, adding it to the rotation.

 

On another night, I added some mint syrup to vanilla ice cream, it gives it a refreshing taste.

I do not think I will use it all up before it spoils, but it’s so easy to recreate (literally takes 10 minutes) and the mint is abundant. If you are into mojitos, it seems like the perfect addition.

I recently saw an article about dipping mint leaves in chocolate to harden, so that is next on the list!

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