Our newest experiment is mint extract. That’s right, I said it: mint extract. We decided to roll with mint because mint extract is awesome to have on hand for holiday baking (think mint brownies and mint chocolate cookies). Well, that and because we came home from Libertarian Boyfriend’s parents’ house with a gallon sized Ziplock stuffed to the brim with mint leaves. There’s only so many mint juleps you can knock back in one sitting, even if you’re a semi-professional drunk like me.

Unfortunately, our first go at this had to been thrown out, as we were using a bum recipe from the intertubez. (It was basically 1/2 cup vodka to 1/2 cup muddled mint which, for the record, didn’t really sound right to us, but we soldiered on anyway. As predicted, it came out a gloppy mess that was beginning to smell rancid a week in.) This time around, we combined 1 cup muddled mint to vodka in a pint Mason jar. We muddled the mint in the jar, then covered with vodka. Yesterday, I dumped in a touch of extra vodka, just to make sure that everything was completely covered, and it’s basically coming to the very top of the mason jar.

I’m crossing my fingers that this batch will come out well. Let’s hope!