Cucumber Gimlet with Cucumber Mint Lime Simple Syrup

My husband and I have gotten into making simple syrups over the last year, and surprisingly I started making this Cucumber Mint Lime Simple Syrup and cocktail last summer when I was pregnant and couldn’t partake in alcohol. It’s a great refreshing summer drink and I did end up using it in a mocktail for a short time before I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes and had to give up sugar – quarantine while pregnant was rough.

I based my syrup and cocktail on a few different recipes I found on Pinterest and whenever I make this I have to jump back and forth through a bunch of them to remember how to do it, so it’ll be beneficial to me as well to have this written down in one place.

I’ll start with the syrup since that has to happen before the cocktail. Ideally a few hours before so it has time to chill.

1. Grate the cucumber right into a small to medium sized saucepan. Like with a cheese grater. You don’t even need to take the skin off. And just a heads up – it will get a little messy.
2. Add the lime zest, water, and sugar to the saucepan.
3. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the sugar dissolves.
4. Remove from heat and stir in the mint. Let it steep for 30 minutes in the glorious soup of cucumber, lime, and mint.
5. Strain into a bottle. I like these easy to use/clean squeeze bottles.

Once your simple syrup has chilled for like an hour or so you can make your Gimlet!

1. Add gin, lime juice, simple syrup, and ice to shaker. Shake it up baby.
2. Pour into a coupe glass (martini glass works too)
3. Garnish if you like.
4. Drink!! But not too fast, this one will go down quick if you let it.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

For those of you non-imbibers, or if you want to make a fun drink for the kids, here’s my mocktail recipe using the same Cucumber Mint Lime Simple Syrup.

• Cucumber mint syrup
• Lemon juice
• Sparkling water

1. Combine in a glass with ice to taste – sorry I kind of just eyeball this one. So maybe like a third of each??

You could use lime juice instead of lemon juice, but I found it to be a little too tart.

To make life easier I like to do cocktail prep when I have some spare time – it’s kind of like meal prep that those overachieving mothers do, but for booze, so definitely more rewarding. I do this by making simple syrups (plain and flavored) and juicing lemons and limes and storing them in those handy squeeze bottles. You’ll need to label them though since it can get confusing when you have lemon, lime, and a limey looking syrup next to each other in the fridge.

I don’t recommend the chalk pens for labeling in the fridge – doesn’t last.