What is New Year’s Eve without Champagne!
We like to take things up a notch. Here is a Champagne cocktail to try this year!
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The perfect festive champagne cocktail for a party.
While I am not a huge fan of having big celebrations on New Year’s Eve, I do like to toast the new year with champagne. Laura mentioned that she can be a bit of a Grinch about Christmas. I am like that about New Year’s Eve celebrations. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good party. It is just that New Year’s Eve celebrations often come with such high expectations, that they often fall short (where if the same party were a generic house party in September, it would be remembered as epic). It is all about expectations.
My go-to on New Year’s Eve is a great dinner with a few close friends and some bubbly.
We watch the ball drop in Time’s Square and wonder how cold all those New Yorker’s must be!
Beware, these go down easy!
For this year’s celebration I am going to make this Cranberry Champagne Cocktail.
It is a twist on a classic old-school cocktail called a ‘French 75.’ The original French 75 cocktail was said to celebrate the firepower of the WWI French 75-millimeter field gun. Let’s just say that the gin hiding in this version also packs a punch that may feel like you got hit with a 75mm field gun! Beware.
Do you want to offer two options? Try Bruce’s Champagne Cocktail as well. Do a taste test!
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Cranberry Champagne Cocktail
This cranberry twist on the classic French 75 champagne cocktail is perfect for a party. It looks festive and it tastes amazing!
Ingredients
Cranberry Syrup
- 1 1/4 cup water
- 1 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 cups cranberries fresh or frozen
Cocktail
- 1 oz gin
- 1/2 oz lemon juice fresh
- 1/2 oz cranberry syrup
- 2 oz champagne
- lemon twist garnish
- 2 sugared cranberries garnish
Instructions
Cranberry Syrup
-
Combine water and sugar in a saucepan. Heat over medium heat. Bring to a boil. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Add cranberries and simmer 10 minutes - or until the cranberries pop. Remove from heat, cool and strain. [Yields 1 1/4 cups. Keeps 3 weeks in the refrigerator.]
Cocktail
-
In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine gin, lemon juice and cranberry syrup. Shake and strain into a champagne flute. Top with champagne. Garnish with a lemon twist and two sugared cranberries.
Recipe Notes
This recipe makes one cocktail. If you are serving guests, you can scale up the gin, lemon and cranberry syrup mixture in advance. Just pre-mix it and throw it in the fridge. Top with cold champagne just before serving.
No need to open the fancy champagne when you are using it in a cocktail. Save the expensive stuff for appreciating on its own!
