Strawberries are the star of this low alcohol cocktail featuring a touch of herbal liqueur and Aperol.

If you live in Australia, you’ll be aware of the crisis surrounding sewing needles being found in random strawberries and the resulting fall out from scores of berries having to be thrown out. Rather than not buying strawberries (and making things harder as it is for those working in the field), we say you should be buying more of them! Just cut them up instead of putting them whole in your mouth and you’ll be good to go.

In this recipe, we’ve gone for a low alcoholic cocktail featuring smashed strawberries and a cut strawberry for garnish. The Aperol enhances the sweetness of the fruit and the herbal complexity of the Dom Benedictine provides an added layer.

Ingredients

• 4 whole strawberries, chopped up

• 4 mint leaves

• 15ml Aperol

• 5ml Dom Benedictine

• 15ml simple syrup (depending on how sweet your berries are, you may have to dial this down a little)

• 60ml soda

Muddle or crush the strawberries until it is all smushed up. Add mint leaves and lightly muddle. Add Aperol, Dom Benedictine and simple syrup with enough ice to fill the shaker. Shake and strain into a short tumbler glass filled with ice. Top up with the soda and garnish with cut strawberry and sprig of mint.