I hope everyone enjoyed summer solstice yesterday! Today is rainy and grey, with many rainy and grey days in the forecast, so I thought I would write about something summery… like flavoured ice cubes!

A while ago I stumbled upon this post at the Idea Room about making fresh fruit popsicles, and I was so determined to make them because it’s such a simple yet brilliant idea and the berries and kiwis just look so fabulous in the pictures. There is just one problem — I don’t have a popsicle mold. The only thing I have that’s similar to a popsicle mold is an ice tray. So this sparked an idea of making flavoured ice cubes!

First, we made lemon ice cubes, lime ice cubes, and lemon lime ice cubes…

And when the ice melted, we noticed that the lime pieces sank while the lemon pieces floated… how fascinating…

Then a couple of weeks later, my mom gave me some fresh mint from her garden, so we made some cucumber mint ice cubes! :D (That’s how I stuffed the cucumber slices and mint leaves into the ice tray before adding water.)

Mike likes the lemon lime better, but I prefer the cucumber mint.

I’m still going to try making the fruit popsicles once I get the popsicle molds. Would be perfect after we go strawberry-picking this weekend… mmm… (hopefully it won’t rain! :S)

I think the benefit of making flavoured ice cubes is that one wouldn’t have to always keep lemons and such on hand and take out the chopping board and knife every time one wants a glass of flavoured ice water. I imagine that the flavour would keep well for a while (at least 2 weeks, I would think) since they’re frozen.

Friends also suggested using apricots and raspberries and other fruits, but I worry that the fruit juice would make the water taste like watered down juice… but worth a try, I suppose! Will certainly let you know how it goes if I do try it.

I might even submit this flavoured ice cube recipe to the family cookbook, alongside Aunt Bev’s Wild Ice Cube recipe (made with 100% tap water) ;)

Cheers!