Name: My Favourite Lemon Drop Cocktail Recipe
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 5 min
Yield: 1 servings
Ingredients: 50ml vodka; 25ml fresh lemon juice (about half a lemon); 15ml Cointreau or triple sec; 1 tsp caster sugar, in the cocktail (or 1½ tsp simple syrup); 1 tbsp caster sugar (for the rim); 1 lemon (half for juice, half for wetting the rim); Ice

£1.50 per serving Serves 1 5 min prep Skip to recipe ↓

I hate it when you have to scroll endlessly trying to find the recipe on a recipe website. So here it is.

Cocktails at a half-decent bar are about £10. You can find some for £5 but they might taste like a Calpol-and-WKD mistake. This one is about £1.50 per cocktail to make at home and only takes a few minutes to make. Recipe below. Cheap in the long run if you like a lemon drop.

The recipe

Serves 1, around £1.50 per serving.

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Tick off ingredients and steps as you go to keep your place — switch to imperial measures if you have a set of cups and spoons handy.

Ingredients

50ml vodka
25ml fresh lemon juice (about half a lemon)
15ml Cointreau or triple sec
1 tsp caster sugar, in the cocktail (or 1½ tsp simple syrup)
1 tbsp caster sugar (for the rim)
1 lemon (half for juice, half for wetting the rim)
Ice

Preparation

Cut the lemon in half and juice one half into a small glass.
Tip the tablespoon of caster sugar onto a small flat plate.
Use the squeezed-out half of lemon to wet the rim of your glass, then press the rim into the sugar so it sticks. Set the glass aside.

Instructions

Half-fill a cocktail shaker (or a jam jar with a lid) with ice.
Add the vodka, lemon juice, Cointreau and 1 tsp caster sugar (or the simple syrup) to the shaker.
Shake hard for 15 seconds. The metal (or glass) should feel painfully cold by the end.
Strain into your sugar-rimmed glass and drink.

Best drunk straight after pouring — the sugar rim softens once it sits.

Notes

Cointreau: The Cointreau is the difference between a good lemon drop and a great one. Own-brand triple sec works fine and saves you about 30p a cocktail — use it for casual drinking, save the Cointreau for when people are round. Either way, the maths still beats a single pub round.

No shaker? A jam jar with a lid works fine, just hold the lid on properly. Or stir hard with ice in a glass for 30 seconds and strain.

Sweeter: add another half-teaspoon of caster sugar to the shaker.

Tarter: skip the sugar in the shaker entirely. The sugar rim does enough.

No Cointreau or triple sec? Use 10ml simple syrup instead (equal parts sugar and water, heated until clear, cooled). You lose the orange note so it's a plainer drink, but still good.

Doubling up: scale every ingredient by 2 and shake in one go. Pour into two glasses.

Posh version: mix lemon zest into the rim sugar. Worth it if you're hosting.

Nutrition (per serving, approximate)

~180kcal