Fresh Cranberry Cosmo

So you were excited and bought a bag of fresh cranberries to make some homemade cranberry sauce for your Holiday dinner.  Then, you realized, you don’t have time for that!  
You don’t have time for anything!  What are you going to do with that bag of cranberries? Ahem, may I suggest a cocktail?

Oh the Cosmo.  Probably the second drink I ever ordered at a bar.  The one that made me feel way more sophisticated than the girls getting a Sex on the Beach.  I mean, this was a martini!  The same drink James Bond orders.  

Now when I think about the Cosmo, I cringe.  It’s a cocktail that does everything to mask the taste of the liquor (vodka) going into it.  Most of the time, you use cranberry cocktail that is loaded with sugar and contains mostly grape juice.    

But faced with using up a bag of fresh cranberries from our weekly veg/fruit delivery, I decided there had to be a way to spruce up the Cosmo.  To make it more like a real cocktail and not a shot of vodka with juice.
  

Fresh muddled cranberries were clearly the way to go.  Cointreau adds the orange taste and the sweetness.  I didn’t want to add fresh lime juice, since the fresh cranberries already added the needed tartness, so I went with some lime bitters.  Good vodka brings everything together without changing the flavours too much.  

Now you all know I’m a bourbon or gin girl.  Vodka has never before been featured in a recipe here.  So you have to realize how special this drink is.  It is refreshing, tangy, sweet, and delicious.  I wouldn’t be embarrassed to serve this to anyone.  

Impress your Holiday guests with this beauty.  You’ll never drink another “fake” Cosmo again.  


Fresh Cranberry Cosmo

1/2 cup fresh cranberries
1/2 oz Cointreau
2 oz vodka (I used Belvedere)
4 dashes lime bitters

Combine cranberries and Cointreau in a cocktail shaker.  Muddle cranberries, making sure every berry is crushed.  Add vodka, bitters, and ice.  Shake for 30 seconds until shaker is frosty and drink is ice cold.  Strain through a fine mesh strainer into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with fresh cranberries or an orange twist.