I gotta be honest here:  I’m not a fan of sparkling grape juice.

But a shot of whiskey was not going to be how my girls were going to ring in the new year.  Not for another 18 or 20 years, anyway.

So sparkling grape juice it is.

I wanted to do something a little different, tho, and so I picked up some cotton candy at the dollar store, since I’ve read that people sometimes add it to champagne.

The result?

I loved it!

And so did my girls, which is the important part.

It’s such a simple concept, too:  put a little cotton candy in your glass and pour the champagne / sparkling grape juice over it.  Watch it fizz, and enjoy!

The fizzing happens quite quickly, but it’s still fun to watch.  And listen to.  But the best part?  Your sparkling grape juice now tastes like cotton candy.  Yum!

As you can see in the above photo, the cotton candy disappeared almost the instant the sparkling juice hit it, so it was hard for me to capture the actual process on film.  Although the “after” is kinda pretty.

I used pink cotton candy above, and then I tossed some blue cotton candy into it, which you can see below.  The result was a somewhat murky purple, but delicious.

And, I served it in aperitif glasses, so that my preschooler could feel like a grownup with her own kid-sized wine glass.

This will definitely be served for many New Year’s to come!