Mint comes in many varieties and one of our favorites is chocolate mint!
This gorgeous deep green (with hints of purple) plant is best grown in a container to prevent it from spreading throughout your garden. Chocolate mint is a cultivar of the peppermint plant, grown for it's delicious chocolate-mint flavor, similar to Andes candies. Peppermint is a stronger menthol relative to spearmint and therefore some caution should be taken when using chocolate mint - although the taste may encourage you to eat a lot, it's better to try a small cup first, especially if you're dealing with digestive upset.
Mint is well-known as a digestive aid, helping to treat nausea, diarrhea, constipation and general dis-ease of the stomach. It has also been use to treat headaches, menstrual cramps and is a great sleep aid to take before bed! Chocolate mint is a great additive to tea blends when used with bitter or otherwise unpleasant herbs - the chocolate flavor can help to mask other tastes while adding an anti-bacterial boost to the medicine.
Another favorite way to preserve chocolate mint is to make an herbal sugar. Harvest, clean and pat dry the fresh leaves. Remove from the stem and place the fresh leaves in a glass jar with sugar. You could use 1/2 cup herb to 1 cup sugar or up to a 1:1 ratio, see what works best for you. I like to roughly chop my herbs before adding to the sugar and I've seen plenty of recipes that call for a food processor to finely chop the herbs into the sugar. Leave for 1-2 weeks, shaking daily (ish) to mix up the sugar and herbs. The essential oils from the herbs will slowly soak into the sugar, infusing the sugar with a delicious chocolate mint flavor. This sugar can then be used in recipies or as a topping for cookies, oatmeal, or any other use!
Enjoy
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