Two Ingredient Apple Cider Mimosas

Last Fall was the year of the Apple Cider Shandy. This year, I’m all about the Apple Cider MIMOSA. It’s sweet. It’s tart. It’s bubbly. And it’s a perfectly acceptable reason to pop the cork on a bottle of champagne on a totally random Thursday evening. Life is too short to wait for special occasions. Drink these mimosas now!

This “recipe” is pretty laughable, because it’s two ingredients, and it’s exactly the two ingredients you think it is—apple cider and champagne. Why mess with perfection? And it seriously is total perfection. Like, I just drank two of these before I started writing this post kind of perfection. Please excuse the typos.

If you’re feeling really fancy (or maybe if you’re serving these at a Halloween party), you can rim your champagne glasses with a little bit of brown sugar, and garnish the whole thing with a slice of apple. Just make sure to treat the apple in lemon juice or fruit preserver (Ball makes a good one) before garnishing to avoid it going brown on you.

Or, you could skip the brown sugar rim and the garnish and just drink the dang thing as is. Because it’s delicious even without the accoutrements.

If you’re thinking, “Um, this sounds great, but who can get through an entire bottle of champagne on a weeknight?,” I’d first probably tell you the story of how I made the limo wait for us at our wedding reception because I wanted to go around to each table and finish off the leftover champagne in the bottles. It’s a good example of my love of champagne and my dislike of wasting things coming together in the perfect storm of drunken frugality.

I can totally get through a bottle of champagne by myself in one weeknight.

And then, I’d tell you about these itty bitty bottles of champagne that you can get at your local grocery store. You know the four-packs of wine bottles? Head to that section, and I betcha you can find a four-pack of champagne. They are the perfect size for everyday celebrations. You can get three or four small, toast-worthy glasses of champagne out of each bottle. And two, oh-my-gosh-this-mimosa-is-delicious mixed drinks out of it. We almost always have these mini bottles in our fridge. You never know when today is going to be worth celebrating!

You can use just about whatever apple cider you can get your hands on, and it will be delicious, but if you happen to have a local apple orchard nearby that sells fresh, unfiltered apple cider, grab yourself a bottle of that stuff. The flavor is so much better! We’re lucky enough to have an apple orchard right up the road that makes the best apple cider I’ve ever had. It’s amazing with or without champagne (although, I’m partial to the bubbly version). Enjoy!