{Recipe Redux} Coconut Key Lime Mock-jito

This month, the Recipe Redux challenge was to create a healthy brunch dish for the shower season (ie baby/bridal) or a party drink with fresh ideas (my idea). This is too perfect for me being pregnant and I had to go with my original idea of crafting a delicious mock-tail.

As I mentioned last week in my Pregnancy Survival Guide: Nutrition, pregnancy is the main time in my life where I crave beverages other than water. Lately, I've been wanting a really good mojito. I even bought a mint plant to add to my garden and couldn't resist buying a bag of key limes over a week ago at the grocery store.

The thing that bugs me about cocktails/mocktails though (and keeps me from ordering them), is that they are usually loaded with sugar, either in a simple syrup or fruit juice. My goal was to find a combo of ingredients to capture the essence of the mojito, have little to no added sugar, and be super refreshing. 

Well, let me just tell you that my hubby and I sipped on these yesterday and they were so delicious. At one point, I had to double check myself that it was in fact alcohol-free because it tasted so much like the real thing. 

I highly recommend serving this refreshing, all-natural, guilt-free mock-jito at your next party, shower, or brunch. It will be a huge hit. 

A couple of notes on substitutions: The key limes are easily swapped for regular limes. I would encourage you to use fresh juice though. I used granulated stevia in this recipe. You could use regular sugar or even light agave nectar if you wanted to. 

Coconut Key Lime Mock-jito

1 can (12 fl oz) LaCroix natural coconut flavor sparkling water, chilled

8 mint leaves, roughly torn

3 key limes, juiced (or 1 lime)

1 key lime, sliced in half moons (or 1/4 lime)

2 packets stevia (I used Pure Via)

1 cup ice

Directions

1. Add mint leaves, sliced key lime and stevia to the bottom of a tall glass. Muddle together. (I used a honey stir for this and it worked great.)
2. Add ice then pour LaCroix in glass. Stir gently and serve. 

Serves one. To make a pitcher, multiply recipe by number of people (6-8).

Comments

[Fresh Food Perspectives]

Thanks Lauren. Please let me know if you try them.

[Lauren]

This looks delicious! Can't wait to make!

[Serena]

Oo I love all the LaCroix waters...your creativity gives me lots of ideas for drinking the sparkling waters all summer! Congrats on your babe! Thx for the ReDux idea...obviously we thought it was a great one!

[Lauren]

Genius (here by way of EA's blog) I may, like the commenter above, have to cocktail your mocktail. And may need to coconut water/seltzer as haven't seen that either. So it seems I said the same exact thing as the person above but didn't want to miss out on telling you how good these sound.

[Tspbasil]

Love the title pun and this looks so delish (though I might need to sneak rum or vodka into one of these.) Never knew there was coconut sparkling water - sounds so good too!