Each summer I like to plant herbs on my patio. Among the basil, cilantro, oregano and such, I often plant mint.
But if I’m honest, I rarely cook with it. Instead it usually just becomes a garnish. So this week, I decided to try a couple recipes to include this often ignored herb: Mint Tea and Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies.
The tea is very simple to make. Boil water for your tea, depending on how many cups you are making, and add about three to four mint leaves per cup. Let steep about three minutes. Add sugar, honey or other sweetener and enjoy.
I have to say, this tea is very tasty. The mint flavor really comes through. The color looks green while steeping but it has a yellow color when the leaves are removed.
If you like mint tea, try using real mint leaves. There also are ways to dry them to keep on hand to use in a diffuser later.
For the mint chocolate chip cookies, you can use a normal chocolate chip cookie recipe and add mint.
The mint is added by steeping it in melted butter. The flavor stays in the butter when added to the mix.
At first, I used 1/3 cup of mint in the recipe, but the result didn’t taste very minty. So you may want to increase it to ½ cup if you want more mint flavor.
You don’t want the cookies to be overly minty. If you use too much, it could taste toothpaste flavored instead of mint.
So the trick is to find just the right amount of mint.
You could add some green food coloring to make it look more minty, but it’s not necessary.
There are a variety of mints out there you can plant in an herb garden, even a chocolate mint. All should work in tea or cooking. Just remember the toothpaste problem with adding flavor.
You can make tea with a variety of herbs. Go online and see which ones work well together. Dry them to store for future use.
The result of my minty experiment was pretty tasty and worth a try.
Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/3 cup of rough cut fresh mint
1 cup unsalted butter
¾ cup sugar
¾ cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 bag milk chocolate chips
Melt butter on the stove. When melted, add mint and cook one to three minutes. Don’t let the butter burn or brown. After melting, let cool but don’t let the butter become solid again. Once cool, strain the butter so there are no mint leaves in it. Press leaves to get all the flavor out.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix butter mixture, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and eggs with a mixer until creamed. Set aside.
Mix flour, baking soda and salt. Then add this mixture to the other mixture.
Fold in chocolate chips. Scoop out batter onto a greased baking sheet with a cookie scoop.
Bake eight to 10 minutes. Then cool.
Fresh mint tea
Fresh mint leaves
Sugar or other sweetener
Boil water.
Pour in a cup or tea pot and add mint. Let steep about three minutes. Add sweetener.
June 06, 2021 at 01:02PM
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