Easy Summer Cocktails

These cocktails are quick & easy to make and are excellent on a summer day (or any other time of the year really!) The recipes are listed per-glass.

Cucumber Grapefruit
1/4 grapefruit
Club soda
Organic Cucumber Vodka (such as Crop Vodka- http://www.cropvodka.com/)

Juice the grapefruit and strain the juice before adding it to your shaker. Add ice and 1-2 shots of vodka. Shake it up! Pour into a glass and add a few splashes of club soda. Garnish with a wedge of grapefruit. This drink tastes best on the rocks!



Hard Ginger Ale
Club Soda
Skyy Ginger Vodka

Again, this one tastes best on the rocks. It is half vodka and half clubs soda... it pretty much tastes like ginger ale. I have tried a few ginger vodkas and Skyy is by far the best.



Easy Pom
POM Juice (any flavor, my favorite it POM-Mango)
Vodka
Sprite or Club soda

Again, on the rocks! Add equal parts vodka, sprite and pom juice. Garnish with a lime if you are feelin' fancy!

Frosted Lemon Lime Martinis

I helped throw an engagement party recently where the theme was "Frosted." Naturally, I offered to provide an appropriately themed alcoholic beverage. For this event I made a lemon lime martini. The goal was a frosted, semi clear-white martini.

Measurements are for 1 pitcher of lemon lime martini:

3-4 cups vodka (depending on strength desired)

1.5 cups sparking lemon-aide (Italian lemon-aide)

1.5 cups lime-aide

1/8 cup lemon simple syrup

1/2 cup club soda (or sprite for a sweeter taste)

Fresh slices for garnish

Rock candy sticks for garnish

Fill pitcher (or large seal-able container) 1/8 full with ice. Add the first 4 ingredients and shake. Mixture should turn slightly frothy. Add club soda and several slices of lime to the pitcher and stir gently. Each martini can be garnished with a lime slice and a rock candy to finish the job! Depending on how sour your lime-aide and lemon-aides are, you may need to adjust the amount of simple syrup.

Lemon Simple Syrup:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

Bring water to a boil. Stir in sugar and lemon zest. Boil until water becomes syrupy. Let cool before using in your martinis.