Mocktail Monday: Sparkling Pumpkin Apple Cider

This week's mocktail is a Sparkling Pumpkin Apple Cider. I've been seeing all kinds of recipes for pumpkin drinks and pumpkin cocktails, so I thought I'd try one myself. This is purely my concoction of what I had in my fridge/pantry, so it was a little trial and error.

The original ingredients were:

1 tbsp canned pumpkin puree

1/4 cup apple cider

Sparkling grape juice

To be honest, I thought I had sparkling cider in my refrigerator, and when I pulled it out, it was sparkling white grape juice. So I used the sparkling grape juice with great reluctance. When my husband tried the final product, he was like, that's gross, I'll go the store and get you some sparkling apple cider. Sweet guy.

So I started off with just a tablespoon of pumpkin and 1/4 cup of apple cider. My plan was to pour that in my glass and top off with the bubbly. But it wasn't pumpkin-y enough. After several rounds of putting in just one more tablespoon and adding just a little more cider, I gave up and dumped in the whole can of pumpkin. Here is the final recipe:

Ingredients

1 can pumpkin puree

1/2 cup apple cider

Sparkling apple cider

Instructions

Pour pumpkin and apple cider in blender. Blend until well-mixed. Add 1.5 tbsp of pumpkin cider mix to glass, and top off with sparkling cider. Stir gently. You will lose some of the carbonation but it's worth it to have a well-mixed drink.

I actually liked this drink, but after one glass I was satisfied. I don't think I could drink several glasses of this, but it would be a fun drink to serve for a fall dinner party.

*NOTE* -- I also tried using sparkling mineral water and club soda in place of the sparkling juice. Both were gross. You need something sweet or else it just tastes like watery pumpkin.

Enjoy!