I’ve made my share of gin and tonics for this blog with all kinds of ingredients: cucumber, mint, basil, various citrus fruits, etc. I’ve even made one with strawberries, but this recipe for Blackberry and Meyer Lemon Gin and Tonics promises to be something very different from what I’ve previously tried. Why? It’s got berries, mint, and citrus, which aren’t new, but it also has simple syrup (recipe below). I’ve never encountered a gin and tonic recipe with sweet syrup before. I’m a bit appalled and curious at the same time. A sweet gin and tonic? This is one of those recipes I have to try to find out if it’s good. Let’s get to it!
The good thing about gin and tonics and that the base of the drink is already there: gin, and tonic. You can add pretty much anything you want to this drink and it will be yummy. This however has been by far my favorite flavor collaboration. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did!
The Ingredients
The ingredients weren’t difficult to find, but I did have to hot up two stores. The gin from my local liquor store, and the rest from the grocery store across the street. The gin was, of course, the most expensive item at $23, but very much worth it. Hendrick’s got me back into gin when I had all but stopped drinking it.
The mint, blackberries, Meyer lemons, and tonic water were around $15. All told, this was a pricey couple of drinks! But the good news is there were leftovers of all the ingredients. I highly recommend these Meyer Lemon Greek Butter Cookies (Kourabiedes) to use up the lemons!
And although the recipe says regular lemons can be substituted for Meyer lemons, I didn’t want to go that route. Meyer lemons aren’t as tart as regular lemons, and they have a slight sweetness to them. They are very unique! If you can’t find them, try using equal parts of freshly squeezed lemon and orange juice as a substitute.
The Process
Reading over this recipe, it was obvious that it wasn’t going to be difficult to make. In fact, it only took me 6 minutes to make and garnish 2 drinks (I halved the recipe since my husband doesn’t drink gin). I gathered my ingredients and tools and got to it.
I ended up making 2 attempts at it because I wasn’t happy with my first try. The first one, shown below, was exactly as written with 3 blackberries per glass. As you can see, the color of the finished cocktail was a light lavender color and not quite as dark as the drinks shown with the recipe. My theory is the blackberries I used were quite small.
A couple of days later I tried it again. This time I added 9 blackberries to each glass and thoroughly crushed them to release a much dark purple juice as possible. This time the color of my Blackberry and Meyer Lemon Gin and Tonics was much darker and resembled the photo I had pinned and had in mind when I made these cocktails. I later realized that the photo was from another site and the authors’ pictures were somewhere in between my versions.
Simple Syrup
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup sugar of your choice (I use organic sugar, which gives the syrup an amber tinge)
Instructions
- In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil.
- Reduce heat to medium and add the sugar. Stir until dissolved (the mixture will become clear when the sugar is dissolved).
- Remove from heat and allow to cool. The simple syrup can be refrigerated in a bottle or other airtight container for up to 4 weeks.
