Cranapple Fizz Cocktail

It might be the season of the pumpkin spice latte, but I like cranberry flavors much better.

Cranberry might not be the best match for your coffee, but it makes a nice cocktail, and it can be used in pie, ice cream, jam, chutney ... so many things.

The perfect friend for cranberry is apple, and Smirnoff combined those two flavors in their new Smirnoff Sourced Cranberry Apple. It's pretty tasty stuff, so you don't need to do a lot with it to make a cocktail.

Which is great.

I like tasty cocktails, but I don't get excited about mixing a ton of different ingredients to make a single cocktail in the evening. Because that's what I usually have. Just one.

Life is just a bowl of ... frozen cranberries?

The clove in this cocktail adds that nice holiday flavor that is so familiar. If you're measuring out one or two cocktails the day before you'll be serving, it's simple enough to count the cloves.

On the other hand, if you're planning on flavoring a lot of cocktails or making drinks by the pitcher, you can just put 1/4 cup of whole cloves in the bottle and let it steep for a day or more. The flavor gets stronger the longer it sits, so it's a good idea to taste it occasionally and remove the cloves when you like the flavor.

I briefly considered using some whole cloves as part of a garnish - stuck into an apple slice, for example. But no one really wants to bite into a whole clove, so I nixed the idea. The cranberries on top are a pretty nice garnish, and they keep the cocktail cool.

If you like super-tart things, you can eat those fresh cranberries used for the garnish. But beware. They're crazy tart.

Cranapple Fizz Cocktail

1 ounce Smirnoff Sourced Cranberry Apple
2 whole cloves
Whole frozen cranberries
Sparking or plain lemonade, chilled, as needed

The night before (or at least a few hours before) you want to make your cocktail, measure out the amount of Smirnoff Sourced you will need and add 2 whole cloves per ounce of the Smirnoff.

You can also make this well in advance and just let it steep in a closed container. Strain the cloves out before using the Smirnoff Sourced.

Put a few frozen cranberries into a martini-sized glass or something similar. Or a few more cranberries. As many as you like. The cranberries make a nice garnish and also help keep the drink chilled.

Add the strained Smirnoff Sourced, then fill with the sparkling lemonade (or plain lemonade, if you prefer).

If you don't happen to have prepared lemonade, you can simply add lemon, to taste, along with plain or sparkling water.

Serve chilled.

This post was sponsored by Smirnoff.