With the scorching weather we’ve had for the past few days (not to mention the weekend forecast), it’s tempting to wish summer would hurry up and leave already. To be honest, I kind of do. But then I start thinking about all that’s going to leave along with the warm weather—peak-season tomatoes, peaches, basil, mint—and trying to figure out if I can live solely on tomatoes for the next couple weeks. I guess I could start canning tomatoes or peaches, but I’ve tried canning in the past and wasn’t wild about the hours of work in a hot kitchen (plus, I don’t own a food mill). Preserving flavors in alcohol, on the other hand, is incredibly easy. Enter creme de menthe.
I ended up following the recipe from the website Tablespoon almost exactly—the one difference being that I substituted 151-proof demerara rum for a third of the vodka, both because that’s what I had on hand and because I thought it would help extract more flavor from the mint.
It turns out to be a perfectly lovely cocktail, less sweet than I’d feared—though the fact that my creme de cacao is less sweet than most probably contributed to that. It’s a guilty pleasure sort of drink, a minty, creamy, chocolatey dessert in itself, one of those gateway cocktails that appeals to people who don’t like the taste of alcohol, and that people who consider themselves serious about cocktails look down their noses at. I’ll admit it, though—it turns out I like Grasshoppers. I may even try the suggestion of the Drink Blog, and add some cognac to reduce the level of sweetness. Or not. Classics are classics for a reason.
