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using fresh mint in baking


jedovaty

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Hi!

 

For future reference, does anyone have tips on how best to use fresh mint in baking?

 

In theory this sounded great: add bunch of finely chopped mint to a basic shortbread cookie dough.  Dip in a mint-chocolate glaze based on coconut milk.  The result tasted like an experiment gone wrong.

 

The shortbread cookies were actually okay, except that we used earthbalance sticks instead of butter (dairy allergy in family).  The mint flavor wasn't overly strong while eating the cookie, and instead had a generic herbal-leaf flavor to it.  As consumption concludes, there's a bit of mint in the background.  I'm not sure using more would have been helpful.

 

The glaze was made by simmering a lot of hand-crushed mint in coconut milk, then pouring this through a strainer over dark chocolate, and as it melted, add a half-plop of corn syrup for added gloss.  The aroma of mint simmering in coconut milk is surprisingly awful.

 

Hmmm.  Thanks for any ideas :)

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Interesting... I guess that's a reason why I've never seen coconut milk and mint together anywhere in SE Asia that I've visited - especially in places where both coconut milk and mint use are common.  I've always thought that the best use of mint would be to steep it in something like a tea - like you did in the coconut milk.  But I don't know if I'd crush it next time - mint oxidizes really quickly and the by product is not pleasant.  Maybe try it again but without crushing it?  Also, I don't know if I'd simmer it either.  Get the liquid hot, take it off the heat, then add the mint and let it infuse as the mixture cools.

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26 minutes ago, jedovaty said:

The mint flavor wasn't overly strong while eating the cookie, and instead had a generic herbal-leaf flavor to it.  As consumption concludes, there's a bit of mint in the background.  I'm not sure using more would have been helpful.

 

 

I've had the same experience.  Cooked mint is not a pleasant experience.  Peter Greweling has a lemon mint recipe that calls for using fresh mint and heating it with cream.  The mint is intended to be left in the finished ganache.  I found that I had to use more mint than called for to get any sort of mint flavor at all, and it still is muted.  This is not a bad thing when another flavor (in this case, lemon) is present, and it all ends up being delicious.  If you want a stronger, truer mint flavor, then you might look at mint oil.

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44 minutes ago, Jim D. said:

If you want a stronger, truer mint flavor, then you might look at mint oil.

 

+1

 

I don't really like fresh mint cooked into things, but I like pure peppermint oil as a flavor.  Bonus, you can add a few drops to chocolate and temper it to have a solid coating rather than a soft glaze (if you want the cookies to stay crisp or keep longer)

 

But if you want to continue experimenting with fresh mint, I'd try making a mint sugar to go in the cookie dough by combining whole leaves with sugar and letting them sit for a day until the essential oil is sucked out and flavors the sugar.  Maybe a cold infusion for the coconut milk as well, mix and chill together overnight then strain and add to chocolate.  Heating can change volatile flavors.

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Beware there are many mint varieties, so the flavor strength and how it changes with heat depends on this.

For the cookies, I would say the best thing is to grind the mint leaves (put them whole) with enough sugar in a spice grinder.

For the infusion, I have zero experience about using mint with cocnonut. I would avoid crushing mint leaves that are going in a hot infusion. You can add them whole and leave them in infusion for some time, or you can add them whole, wait for 1 minute, then blitz with an immersion blender and strain. If you want to coat the cookies in chocolate then you can make an infusion of mint leaves in cocoa butter, then add it to the chocolate.

 

 

 

Teo

 

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Teo

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I find cooked mint quite awful. Anything longer or hotter than a steep in hot water (as in making a tisana) will develop unpleasant flavor. I used mint to flavor basbousa and other cakes by steeping it in sugar syrup and dousing the baked cakes. But even briefly stipped, it doesn't taste like raw mint, rather like mint tea. Dried mint is often used for cooking in middle eastern, african and other cuisines. Usually added towards the end of cooking, it does not develop the same unpleasant notes.

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~ Shai N.

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Thank you all very much for your feedback, this has been very educational!!

 

I wonder what would happen if mint were steeped in oil, whether cold or fried like a chili oil or sage in butter.  But after experiencing the ripe aroma of mint simmering in coconut milk, not sure I'm going to take this any further.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  👨‍🔬

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I think you got the main idea - nasty. As others noted there are many different mints, but the oil may be the route of less drama and disappointment. I have always kept mint as a last minute add to anything hot or warm like from a Viet herb platter. It is not an oily herb at all so kinda oil & water I think. As always I could be so so wrong.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Mint is just about the most fragile herbal flavor. It's an exercise in science (and maybe futility) to get the 3-dimensional flavor of fresh mint into a cocktail that you'll be drinking 2 minutes from now. Getting it into baked goods would require better kung-fu than what I've got. Mint oil is reliable, and can be tasty in minute amounts, but really isn't anything like fresh mint. Same with extract. 

 

If you're going to continue the experiments, maybe try Teo's idea of grinding into the sugar. It would also be interesting to do a butter infusion, but I wouldn't do it hot ... I'd go just warm enough to melt the butter, and hold it covered in a water bath. Taste it periodically, and strain before you start extracting nasty flavors. Solubility should much higher than in water-based liquids. Another possibility is infusing into sugar syrup. Syrups are powerful solvents for non-polar aromatic oils. This might be impractical, because you'd need a more dilute syrup that what's useful in a cookie ... but it might be interesting.

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Notes from the underbelly

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I'll keep these things in mind.  After 3 weeks, we're still chuckling about how gross the experiment was, but I hope to try some of the techniques here another day, since mom's garden has a huge area of mint growing.  Especially now that I learned I can use other fats instead of the earthbalance sticks (which I think contributed to the pain), it'll open up some alternatives to us.

 

The best takeaway from this: although the results were without a doubt disappointing, we got a really good laugh out of them and learned something.  Let's keep having fun 😎

 

OMG I hope to never smell mint simmering away in coconut milk again 🤢

Edited by jedovaty (log)
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