Red Plum Cardamom Iced Tea

Are you done mowing the lawn yet? Good…I’ve got a treat for you!  

It’s national Iced Tea day and though I don’t normally take part in these national food holidays (mostly because I couldn’t bother to be so organized) I just happen to have a post today that matches the occasion. I do plan on experimenting a bit this summer with various fruit syrups mixed with tea because our family just can’t seem to get enough! Incidentally if you wanted to make a nice refreshing cocktail with the syrups, no one at this blog would stop you…

I bought some really nice looking red plums and had the idea to make a plum tart but just never got around to it. What I did do was make up a large bottle of plum syrup accented by green cardamom, one of my favourite spices. I pitted and cut up about 9 red plums and crushed ten green cardamom pods. Then I added them to a medium pot with one litre of water and 3 cups of sugar. I stewed them together until the plums were soft, occasionally mashing them with a potato masher to grab as much plum flavour as I could. Next, I strained the syrup through a piece of cheese cloth into a pitcher. Then I set it in the refrigerator to cool.I brewed a pitcher of black tea (traditional English Breakfast) and let it sit in the refrigerator to cool. Then I mixed them at 1 part syrup to 3 parts tea. What resulted was a very tasty and refreshing brew.

Oh yeah, about that cocktail…if you do a really nice job mowing the lawn you may even receive one of these: