Watermelon Punch with Fresh Mint and Lime

This recipe is incredibly easy to whip up with a blender. Did you know you can just blend fresh watermelon into a slushy drink? You really don't need to add anything else - it's kind of amazing! And very tasty.

But this recipe takes watermelon juice to the next level by amping it up with a big squeeze of fresh lime. Then mint leaves are muddled with a bit of sugar and gently stirred in to the drink.

The result is a vibrant red slushy drink flecked with pretty little dots of green. Garnish with mint and serve at your end of summer cookouts and celebrations!

Watermelon Punch with Fresh Mint and Lime

Simple Syrup
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c water

Watermelon Punch
1 medium watermelon
2 or 3 large juicy limes
1/3 cup loosely packed fresh mint leaves
2 tsp sugar

First, make your simple syrup by combining the 1/2 cup sugar with 1/2 cup water and heating in a saucepan until sugar has dissolved. Pop in fridge to let cool. Alternately, you could skip the simple syrup and use honey or agave to sweeten (which is what we did).
Next, cut off the green watermelon rind and cut the pink flesh into chunks. Puree in the blender thoroughly. You should have about 4 cups of watermelon juice.  You can strain this juice if you'd like, but we all like it with the pulp included! Put the juice into the fridge to keep cool.

Juice the limes; you'll need about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of juice. Coarsely chop the mint, then crush it with the 2 teaspoons of sugar. We used a mortar and pestle for this step, but Erin says you can also use a mixing bowl and big wooden spoon. Stir together the resulting mint paste and lime juice.

Your final step is to mix the cooled watermelon juice with the mint-lime-sugar mixture. Add 2-3 Tablespoons of the simple syrup (or honey) at this point to bring the drink to your desired level of sweetness. We found that we didn't need much at all!
Serve in pretty glasses & garnish with mint.

Hong Kong Cafe style breakfast

Hong Kong is a food paradise. When I was working there few years ago, I hardly ever cook. Dim sum with friends was the routine every Sunday. During the working week Cafe restaurants were probably where I went for breakfast, lunch and sometime dinner most of the time. I love HK cafe restaurants or 'cha chaan tian' 茶餐廳, they serve food and drinks all day long from egg and bacon sandwich, french toast, Portugese egg tart to stir fried noodles/rice etc....

One of my favourite cafe breakfast is 'chaan dan tung' 餐蛋通 to wash down with 'yin yan lai cha' 鴛鴦奶茶. Chaan dan tung is macaroni soup with fried spam and fried egg, while yin yan lai cha is a milky tea with coffee. Both sound very strange but really quite tasty and reasonably cheap.

Here is what I do to recreate this at home occasionally for weekend late breakfast.

For the chaan dan tung 餐蛋通, all you need are these ingredients then assemble together

some tasty chicken or pork stock

cooked macaroni

one fried egg per person

2 slices of fried spam or Chinese luncheon meat per person

some blanched Chinese green (like choi sum) or iceburg lettuce

light soy and ground pepper to taste

Heat the stock add cooked macaroni and seasoned to taste then top with fried spam, fried egg and some veg.

For the yin yan milky tea coffee 鴛鴦奶茶

Blew some tea, preferably Lipton, Ceylon red tea or any far east brand English tea. If not use normal Tetley or other English tea.

Blew some light fragrant coffee like Arabica or Columbian, freshly ground is better but can also use instant if you like

Some hot milk or evaporated milk

some sugar (optional)

Mix 50:50 brewed hot tea with coffee add plenty of hot milk or some evaporated milk. Evaporated milk gives a distinctive S E Asian tea/coffee taste. I don't normally add sugar to tea or coffee but yin yan tea coffee is nice with some sugar.

Yin Yang tea coffee is nice too cold with plenty of ice. If you fancy you can add crushed iced, black pearls to make bubble tea 珍珠鴛鴦奶茶, serve in a tall glass with extra wide straws.

McDonald's Shamrock Shake Recipe

Ingredients :

3 Cups vanilla ice cream
1 1/4 Cups milk, 2% or whole
1/4 teaspoon mint extract
4 drops green food coloring
Whipped cream, to top with
A cherry

How To Prepare :

1. Start with the ice cream, scooping it into a blender. Then pour the milk on top.  Add the mint extract and food coloring, then blend sothat the food coloring and  mint is evenly absorbed.

2. Taste the mixture. If you'd like to add more mint or color, do so now. Blend again until smooth.

3. Pour into a heavy shake glass and top with whipped cream and a cherry.

Serves :  2





Source: Recipe4Living

Fruit Yogurt Shakes Recipe

Ingredients : 
•    1 1/2 cups vanilla yogurt
•    1/2 cup whole milk
•    2 tablespoons seedless raspberry jam

How To Prepare : 
1. Blend vanilla yogurt, milk, and raspberry jam in a blender until smooth, about 1 minute.

Servings : 03

Prep Time : 5 Min

Ready In : 5 Min