Your Best Summer Cocktail

We halved the recipe, with great success. Also, the white peaches at our grocery store looked (and smelled) much better than the yellow ones, so we used them, and were quite pleased. We also proved that cheap triple sec still tastes good!

Amanda measures the sugar for the ginger infused simple syrup.

Amanda has a great method for peeling ginger, with very little waste. First, cut off the knobby bits...

... then scrape off the skin with the edge of a spoon. It wastes almost no ginger, and smells great!

We halved this bit of the recipe too, and simmered it only for a minute and a half.

Merrill gave Amanda this great peeler- it has tiny teeth, and is perfect for peaches, tomatoes, or any other soft fruit.

Since our peach pit wasn't cooperating, we simply cut around it.

We soaked the peaches in the brandy and triple sec for a bit, and they got appropriately boozy!

We strained the big pieces of ginger out before adding the simple syrup.

So simple, but so good!

The ingredients are slightly more esoteric, but totally worth it. Cynar, a bitter liqueur flavored primarily by artichokes, is great to experiment with!

We didn't have a muddler, but the end of a wooden spoon worked great for muddling the cucumber.

Pouring tequila!

Mmmm... college!

This recipe called for simple syrup, which we made by simmering together equal parts sugar and water until the sugar had dissolved.

Always fresh lemon juice!

A surprisingly therapeutic activity.

The shaker got surprisingly cold in just a few moments. Great for the drink, less ideal for the hands.

Our glass was a touch smaller than a traditional collins glass, so we just didn't use it all.

To float the Cynar, we used the back of a spoon, and poured the liqueur gently over it.

The cynar then formed a rather pefect layer in the middle of the drink. Pouring the cynar directly in would have just mixed it altogether.

Delicious!