Meyer Lemon Martinis: This One's For You, Mom.

My mom is a martini woman. Not the spine-straightening vodka and vermouth type; that's my Uncle Frank's specialty. Jeweled, slightly sweet and tingly refreshing drinks like cosmopolitans are more her style. When I come home to visit we usually spend an evening sitting at the kitchen counter, sipping cocktails. It's always wonderfully relaxing. Here is a drink I think she'll like.

One of my best friends from college, Jasmin, lives across the bay in San Francisco. We try to get together a couple of times a month for dinner and drinks. This weekend I hosted and was trying to decide what to make for dessert. Our apartment building has a Meyer lemon tree in the backyard (pictured) which is currently producing copious amounts of lemons and consequently everything I am cooking lately features lemons. I decided that dessert should be lemon-centric but nothing I saw on the internet or in my cookbooks looked either appealing or easy enough to be worth making. Then an idea occurred to me: who needs dessert when you can make cocktails?! A visit to Google and a few clicks later I had a recipe for Meyer lemon martinis, which I've reproduced below. Mmmmm, Mmmmm, they were delicious!

Meyer Lemon Martinis
2 oz Vodka
.75 oz meyer lemon juice
.5 oz lemon-infused simple syrup (instructions below, increase to .75 oz if using normal lemons)
* a shot glass is 1.5 oz

Mix, shake, and pour, that's all there is too it! To serve I ran a squeezed lemon half around the rim of our flared-mouth wine glasses and then coated the rims with sugar.

Lemon-infused Simple Syrup

2 parts water
1 part sugar
lemon zest to taste (I put one lemon's worth of zest in 1.5 cups of water)

Put the water, sugar and lemon zest in a pot, stir until the sugar is dissolved and heat until just boiling. Take off the heat and let cool, strain and store in the fridge.