When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When your AeroGarden gives you lemon basil… make lemon basil blossom cocktails! I debated whether to file this post in my cocktail series or cooking with my Aerogarden series, and cocktails it is!! Out of the seven herbs growing in my indoor garden, the lemon basil has definitely been the most prolific. But also the most difficult one to find a use for. Until I came across this cocktail recipe in Saveur Magazine. The recipe seemed perfect too because I still have a few bottles of rum that I brought back from my last trip to Puerto Rico.
I doubled the recipe to make enough for the husband and I on a recent hot summer night. You basically start of by making a lemon-basil syrup using 1/4 cup of lemon basil, 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water. Boil until the sugar is dissolved, cool and strain. You’ll have some left-over syrup that you can just store for use in future cocktails. Cut a lemon in half and cut two pretty lemon slices to use as decoration when you’re ready to serve your cocktail. Then zest the lemon. Zest another lemon and reserve the zest from both aside. Juice both lemons. Take 7-8 lemon basil leaves and muddle them with the zest in 2 collins glasses. In a shaker, mix 6 tablespoons of white rum, 4 tablespoon of lemon juice and 2 tablespoons of the lemon-basil syrup. Shake with ice and strain into the collins glasses. You’ve got yourself a refreshing summer drink (though the name blossom is a bit misleading)!
A la vôtre!
great use for the lemon basil, i also had way too much and didn't really know where to put it – drinks are a fantastic alternative to my fish dishes 🙂
this looks good…but alas I have no lemon basil on my window sill…just the regular. how different are the two??
Ooh… fish dishes? I have so much lemin basil, great idea!! Forest, they're pretty different actually but I'm sure you can try it…