These blob-shaped mojitos will terrify your friends — then blow their minds

If you love science and tasty cocktails, we've got the recipe for you: A spherical mojito, mint leaf and all, that bursts in your mouth.

To create it, Tech Insider took a page from Spanish chef Ferran Adria, who popularized molecular gastronomy — a way to mix up traditional food recipes with organic chemistry.

To pull it off we modified one of Adria's revolutionary culinary techniques, called frozen reverse spherification.

Here are the steps to follow if you want to show off your lab and mixology skills to a group of curious friends this summer.

Step 1: Make mojitos!

Mojitos might be the perfect summer drink. Shake up your favorite mix of ice, rum, limes, mint, and simple syrup (sugar dissolved in water) to your own taste. Try it, then try it again. Yum.

If you don't have a favorite recipe, you can scale up this one as needed (it's for one drink):

- glass full of ice
- 0.75 oz simple syrup
- 6 mint leaves (no need to muddle; the ice will smash it up)
- juice from half of a lime
- 1.5 oz of your favorite rum (a former bartender on staff prefers 10 Cane rum)

Once you've made the perfect mojito and you've made extra sure it's delicious, add two parts club soda to each part rum — this will help it freeze solid.

Step 2: Hack your mojitos.

Then for every shot of alcohol, also add a quarter teaspoon of calcium lactate, a calcium salt that can be found in baking soda, cheese, and antacids.

Pour the mixture into a silicone mold and put in the freezer overnight. If you want to be extra-fancy, put a mint leaf in the mold before you pour, so it's suspended in the orb. 

Now you can relax and drink any leftover mojito (responsibly, please).

Step 3: Mix up some sodium alginate, let it rest.

Sodium alginate is a derivative of brown seaweed. It's a natural polysacchride, meaning it's made up of long chains of sugars.

Take 2 cups of water — for best results, use distilled (not tap) — and mix it with about a third of an ounce of the sodium alginate.

When the alginate comes into contact with calcium ions, the molecules start to link up. If your tap water is hard (meaning it has a high calcium content), the reaction will start too early and the bath will start to gel before you drop your mojitos in. Which is why you should play it safe and use distilled.

Let it rest for 15 minutes or longer (preferably longer) so any air bubbles float to the surface and don't get in the way of the chemical reaction you're about to trigger.