Hey Seasoned sippers!  With mint as our ingredient of the season, you’re likely to see a lot of mojito recipes on the blog this summer.  Today I’m going to put a simple twist on the classic mint mojito recipe.  A mint simple syrup twist to be exact.

Mint Simple Syrup Ingredients:

• 1 cup roughly chopped mint (give or take)
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar

Mint Simple Syrup Instructions:

• Place the roughly chopped mint leaves in a heat-safe bowl or jar.
• Combine the water and sugar in a small sauce pot over medium-high heat.
• Stir to dissolve the sugar and bring to a boil.
• Once the mixture is boiling and all the sugar has dissolved, remove from heat.
• Pour the sugar mixture over the mint leaves and cover the bowl with a plate or lid of some kind to allow the mixture to steep.
• Uncover the simple syrup after a thirty minutes and strain out the mint leaves with a mesh strainer or cheese cloth.

Mojito Ingredients:

•  10 mint leaves
• 1/2 lime
• 2 tbsp mint simple syrup
• 1-1.5 oz white rum
• 1 cup ice (crushed if possible)
• 1/2 cup club soda

 Mojito Instructions:

• Roughly chop eight mint leaves and add them to the cocktail shaker along with half of the ice.
• Cut the lime in half.  Cut one slice and then cut the remaining half into 4 wedges.  Squeeze the juice from the wedges into the cocktail shaker.  Drop the juiced wedges in as well.
• Add two tablespoons of mint simple syrup to the shaker (add more if desired) along with 1-1.5 ounces of white rum.
• Put the lid on tight and shake, shake, shake.
• Empty the contents of the shaker into your tumbler, add more ice if desired and top it off with club soda. Garnish with a slice of lime and a few mint leaves.
• Sit back, relax and sip.

As you can see, I like to drink my cocktails while browsing through a book or two.  First I pulled out this classic Old Mr Boston Bartender Guide to compare mojito recipes, but alas there was no mojito recipe to be found.  I quickly became bored of browsing cocktail recipes (shame on me, I know) so I decided to flip through Two Eagles.  It’s a large photo book that looks at the natural history of the United States and Mexico borderlands.  It is over 200 pages filled with fantastic photos and interesting text so you may want to mix up another mojito!