Cucumber Mint Gimlet

Summer won't be here for much longer, which makes it a great time for cucumber-based cocktails. I decided to play around with some, and this gimlet was the night's winner.

Ingredients:

• 1 cucumber slice
• 2 leaves of mint
• 1 oz. Hendrick's gin
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/4 oz. honey

Muddle the cucumber slice and mint, then add the other ingredients. Shake with ice. Optionally, garnish with another cucumber slice.

The 4:2:1 ratio is just because it took too long for the honey to come out of the bottle, and I made a good number of these. I think it came out fine, though. Using Hendrick's is cheating a little, because it already has cucumber in it - but then again, it can be hard to get the cucumber flavor to come out. Vodka is another good choice here, because it won't overpower the cucumber. Some other substitutions I can see working are rosemary for mint or agave nectar for honey (we didn't have any agave nectar on hand).

I tried a cosmopolitan variant, but the cranberry juice overpowered the cucumber taste. If it's still hot out next week, I might try decreasing the amount of cranberry, using cucumber juice instead of muddling, or using white cranberry juice (if I can find any). Unfortunately, cucumber juice isn't so easy to make: it was the original plan, but...

One cucumber and half an hour with a grater and cheesecloth got me this much juice. I'll have to find a more efficient way if I want to go that route.

But failed cosmo experiments aside, cucumber was a good choice for the weather.