Iced Tea with Ginger-Mint Simple Syrup

42 Replies

It’s finally here!! I am so excited… and here’s why!

The Jenna in question here is the writer of Jenna’s Everything Blog. She and her husband, Adam, live in Chicago and are expecting their first baby, Alice, quite soon. When Veronica of Veronica’s Cornucopia emailed me a few months ago to ask if I wanted to be part of a virtual baby shower for Jenna, I didn’t have to think twice!

I’ve been reading Jenna’s blog for quite some time… delighting in her tasty recipes [like these no-bake peanut butter cup bars that I blogged about last summer], eating up her awesome book reviews [she loves the Christy Miller books, which I adored growing up], loving her amazing photography skills [like these Chicago photos], and exploring all the other areas of the “everything” portion of her blog. Including the little fact that Jenna and her husband graduated from Indiana University, where I currently am a graduate student! Woohoo! Anyways, even though I’ve never met Jenna in real life, I am convinced that she and her husband will be awesome parents. They love the Lord and will raise their daughter well… and we are all excited to be able to honor her today!

For the occasion, I decided to make Iced Tea with Ginger-Mint Simple Syrup. I normally don’t take the time to make “special drinks,” but showers are the perfect time to deviate from the norm.

This Ginger-Mint Iced Tea is a simple, subtle, elegant drink that is a perfect compliment to any party, occasion, or plain ‘ole everyday refreshment. I made it by infusing a basic simple syrup with lots of fresh mint and ginger… a painless process that I can see myself doing time and time again to flavor my iced tea [or even lemonade] on a regular basis.

The advantage to sweetening tea with syrup rather than straight-up sugar is that liquid dissolves more easily in liquid… who knew? It’s a breeze to stir this syrup into iced tea to your taste preference [I used 1/4 cup for a quart]. Speaking of preferences, I typically make iced tea with cold brew tea, but feel free to use whatever method you prefer. That’s the beauty of beverage recipes… they are super flexible and hard to mess up. Always a good thing, if you ask me. :) And speaking of good things, don’t let this recipe be the only stop at the virtual baby shower. Be sure to check out the other recipes from Jenna’s other wonderful blog friends, posted below the recipe. :) Enjoy!

Iced Tea with Ginger-Mint Simple Syrup
click to print

Ingredients:

  • 1 quart + 1 cup water, divided [filtered if your town's tap water is as icky-tasting as mine is]
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup roughly chopped mint, packed
  • 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, roughly chopped
  • 2 large “family-size” cold brew iced tea bags [or the equivalent of regular tea bags if you prefer iced tea made some other way... I like cold brew iced tea cause it's easy]

Directions:

In a small pot, combine 1 cup water, sugar, mint, and ginger over medium-high heat. Stir continually until sugar dissolves–about 4-5 minutes for me until sugar was really dissolved, then reduce heat to low. Simmer for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let steep for 20 minutes.

While simple syrup is steeping, prepare iced tea. Combine 1 quart water and tea bags in a large pitcher [mine is probably ~1 1/4 quarts] and let steep for 8-10 minutes, or until tea is brewed to desired preference. Place in refrigerator to chill.

After syrup has steeped 20 minutes, pour syrup through a fine strainer into a large measuring cup or bowl. Refrigerate syrup, strainer and all [to catch any last lingering drops of syrup caught up in the mint and ginger].

After tea and syrup have chilled, stir in syrup to taste. I used a generous 1/4 cup and found that plenty sweet for me, but it was nowhere near Southern sweet tea so if that’s your thing, use more. Store extra syrup in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to a month.

Time: 4 hours [15 minutes active].

Yield: 6-8 servings tea, ~ 1 1/3 cup simple syrup.

Be sure to continue the virtual baby shower love for Jenna by checking out these wonderful posts too:
A Little Lunch (Eufaula, OK): Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice Scones
City Songbird (Greensboro, NC): Merry Christmas, Alice!
Eats Well With Others (New York, NY): Peanut Butter and Honey Ice Cream
Hunting for Bliss (Bozeman, MT): Garam Masala Deviled Eggs
Pinking Shears & Broccoli Spears (Newark, DE): Making Food Good For Your Baby
Sydney Shares (Eugene, OR): Baby BLTs 
That’s Some Good Cookin’ (Salt Lake City, UT): Cheesecake Cookie Bars
The Pajama Chef (Bloomington, IN): Iced Tea with Ginger-Mint Simple Syrup
Two Dogs In The Kitchen (Sterling, MI): Spicy Asian Meatballs
Veronica’s Cornucopia (Wichita, KS): Raspberry Almond Fudge Cookies
Very Culinary (Sacramento, CA): Toasted Orzo and Chickpea Salad
Words on Wendhurst: A Gift For Jenna and Alice
About these ads

42 thoughts on “Iced Tea with Ginger-Mint Simple Syrup”

  1. Pingback: Garam Masala Deviled Eggs (For Jenna!) | hunting for bliss

  2. Pingback: Raspberry Almond Fudge Cookies « Veronica's Cornucopia

  3. Pingback: Spicy Asian Meatballs | twodogsinthekitchen

  4. Pingback: A Virtual Baby Shower for a Far Away Friend «

  5. Pingback: Toasted Orzo and Chickpea Salad for Jenna’s Virtual Baby Shower — very culinary

  8. Pingback: Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice Scones « a little lunch

  9. Pingback: Making Food Good for Your Baby « Pinking Shears & Broccoli Spears

    1. Sarah Post author

      thanks sues! it’s very refreshing…i think i might make up a pitcher when i get home tonight. i’ve been thinking about it all day!

      Reply ↓
  13. Veronica

    Thank you so much for providing the beverage, I was starting to get parched! lol! This sound super refreshing and delicious. Thank you so much for joining us and putting up with my ineptitude as a host and the crazy amount of emails. I think we managed to pull it off pretty well despite it all! :)

    Reply ↓
    1. Sarah Post author

      you are welcome! thanks for including me and doing so much work! planning things like this can be a big challenge…i’m working on planning my second shower this year so i know how it goes. :) i think it turned out great & i can’t wait to read all the posts when i get home tonight!

      Reply ↓
  14. Jenna

    Sarah, thanks so much for your sweet words!
    In another life, we’re all at IU at the same time and become fast friends in person. =) Though I can’t say I’d be your running partner (I seriously don’t know how you do it), we could certainly have cozy reading evenings and cookathons. =)

    Reply ↓
  17. Amy

    This virtual shower gig is awesome! I’ve loved seeing what everyone else brought. And yes, it would have been fun to do this in person. Big stupid country.

    Reply ↓
  18. Terri

    What a great idea for a ginger-mint simple syrup. It just so happens that I have some mint leaves left over from Jenna’s shower–haha. Plus, there’s some fresh ginger hanging out in my fridge with no place to go at the moment. Thanks for sharing. It was nice meeting you through Jenna’s virtual shower!

    Reply ↓
  21. Sally

    A virtual baby shower! So fun. I had to stop by and tell you, Sarah, that I LOVE the sounds of this iced tea! Ginger is one of my favorite ingredients to work with and the mint makes the whole glass seem so refreshing! Perfect for a shower!

    Reply ↓
  23. Joanne

    I’m a MAJOR fan of iced tea to begin with and I feel like when you add ginger and mint it only has to get better! The perfect beverage for the shower!

    Reply ↓
    1. Sarah Post author

      thanks joanne! and the cool thing is… my sister’s bridal shower is next weekend so i think i’ll actually make it for an in-person shower too!

      Reply ↓

  25. Pingback: Ginger Mint Simple Syrup | sel et sucre

  26. Pingback: Cheesecake Cookie Bars

Thanks for visiting... I would love to hear from you!

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s