Watermelon Punch with Fresh Mint and Lime

Dulcie and I continue to be smitten with Erin's new cookbook, Yummy Supper. We've got one more recipe for you before the end of our giveaway. This one is for a refreshing end of summer drink made with watermelon, lime, and muddled mint. A little bit mojito, a little bit fresca!

Don't Forget:

Enter to win our Yummy Supper cookbook giveaway here! Just leave a comment on the post. Ends Friday August 29th, 2014.

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.