Raspberry Mint Iced Tea and abundance

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, there is too much mint in my garden. The mint has gone wild. Not literally, but it’s pretty abundant. So I’m going to use it up, even if it means that my family complain about the repetition of flavours.

And they probably will.

I’m going to try and switch it up though, keep them on their toes so they don’t know whether they’re going to be eating or drinking it, or whether I’ll serve it to them in sweet or savoury dishes. I’ve got to keep myself entertained somehow.

The first offering is this raspberry mint iced tea. It was super hot over the weekend, and I was craving something refreshing and sweet like this. As it turned out, today wasn’t anywhere near as hot as the weekend, but I still sipped happily on a glassful of this iced tea.

It’s super speedy to whip up and it’s teeming with gorgeous Summery flavours.

Comment below and let me know what else I should do with all this mint!

Raspberry mint iced tea

Makes about 700ml

• 2 cups boiling water
• 4 white tea and raspberry tea bags
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 cup mint leaves
• 1 cup sparkling water

Before you start making anything tea, I feel that I should warn you about the concept of “one cup of mint leaves.” Mint is very light. It does not weight much. So when I say one cup of mint leaves, I urge you to really pack that cup full of mint leaves, because you want to get as much minty flavour in this iced tea as possible.

The mint syrup is delightful, as long as you put enough mint leaves in there!

Place water, sugar and mint in a saucepan over medium heat to make this syrup. Stir until the sugar dissolves, crushing the mint as you go to extract as much flavour as possible. Allow this mixture to slowly come to a boil, then stir it for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool

While the mint mixture is cooling, boil your two cups of water and pop the raspberry tea bags in. Allow the tea to steep for about 3 minutes.

Scoop the wilted mint leaves out of the mint syrup mixture and pour it into the cooling tea mix. Allow the mixture to cool, add the sparkling water and transfer into a jug filled with ice cubes, frozen raspberries and mint leaves.

Sit down with a good book and sip to contentment.