summer cubed

I stood parched yesterday drinking a glass of water, and thinking it was quite boring! It’s been hot out lately, and hydrating should really be more festive. I decided to brew some iced tea, when I noticed the stack of unused ice trays and an abundance of herbs in my kitchen. Then it occurred to me (insert lightbulb over head)… I was going to spice-up my H2O with some homemade summer ice cubes! Now, frozen water cubelets aren’t too inherently exciting, but using some fresh seasonal ingredients and your freezer, and there we have a ridiculously easy way to jazz-up your cocktail or water glass.

I looked at my stores and decided to pull out fresh watermelon, raspberries, mini cucumbers, lemons and limes. I also thought we could pair these with fresh herbs like rosemary, orange mint, and basil. There are endless combinations, but here are how the pairings went down for my first batches:

• Raspberry with rosemary
• Lime juice with basil
• Lemon juice, basil, mint & cucumber
• Melon ball with mint
• Raspberry with lemon juice
• Cucumber with lemon juice
• Lemon juice with rosemary
• Melon ball with basil

Thirsty yet?! Good, let’s cube stuff:

Summer Ice Cubes

with fresh fruits & herbs

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summer ice cubes

51

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 3 hours

Yield: trays of good looking cubes!

you pick

Brighten up your summer and your beverage with these easy summer ice cubes boasting fresh fruits, herbs and citrus! Perfect for a glass of water, or a creative cocktail.

What to get...

Ingredients included but are not limited to:
• 1 mini cucumber, sliced
• watermelon, using a small melon baller
• fresh raspberries
• juice of 2, sweet lemons.
• zest of 1 lemon
• juice of 2 limes
• zest of 1 lime
• 1-2 bottles of water, or distilled water
• fresh rosemary sprigs
• fresh mint, or orange mint variety, (cut leaves smaller if large)

What to do...

This is gonna be easy!:
1. Clean and dry two ice cube trays (you can do as many as you like, in varying cube sizes!).
2. Assign different fruit and herb combinations to each tray/portions of trays.
3. I made: raspberry rosemary, melon ball & orange mint, melon ball & basil, lemon & rosemary, lime & basil, basil & mint & cucumber, cucumber & lemon.
4. First place in fruit and dry herb combos.
5. Next add about 1/2 cube's worth of citrus juice to respective tray.
6. Lastly, fill to top, covering ingredients with the bottled water.
7. Freeze for a few hours.
8. Use in festive drinks!

Notes

This is as easy, but make sure to use ingreds that are fresh and small enough to fit into your ice cube trays. Trays of different sizes can be used to!

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http://www.dinnervine.com/2012/06/summer-ice-cubes/

from the kitchen of www.dinnervine.com

These look pretty sharp in a drink, and would certainly be festive for a holiday BBQ. With the 4th of July approaching, maybe patriotic blueberry, strawberry cubes? I’m just saying! I had a couple of sizes of standard ice trays on hand, but these days you can find them in just about any shape and size. You can freeze a small segment of a citrus fruit if you want to keep it simple, but with the mixology craze these days, I can see getting a little experimental and loving it! Perhaps a cosmo with the raspberry rosemary cubes, or a vodka soda with the cucumber-lemon-mint-basil combo. Is it 5:00 yet? Well, until my next Happy Hour, my water just got upgraded with a melon ball & mint… So long Crystal Light!