You’re staying #AFAF (alcohol free, as fuck), but every now and then you miss the cocktails and crave a fun little drink. Enter Cotton Candy Mock-a-Ritas! If you’ve given up sugar in addition to the alcohol, go ahead and exit out of this post and be on your merry way. This drink would make Wilford Brimley roll over in his grave. Kidding!

One of the most annoying things is finding a recipe online that sounds intriguing, then having to read some four page autobiography on the author before getting to the actual recipe. So, so fucking annoying.

No autobiography on this post. Here is the recipe…

Okay. So now that we’ve got that out of the way. A little more info on the ingredients…

Tequila Alternative. Let me preface this by saying I despise tequila. Don’t get me wrong – in my “past life” I would never, ever pass up a shot, but tequila has always tasted like straight-up barf to me. Even the “good” stuff we got from Mexico a couple of years back. Bleh. If I was shooting tequila, I was sure to be shoving lemon wedges in my face shortly thereafter. Margaritas were tolerable, but I could usually only drink one or two because the heartburn would kill me.

So when I say that the Ritual Zero Proof is a damn good tequila alternative, take it for what it is worth. I like it. A lot. It’s got a nice little bite and when mixed into a mocktail, it actually feels like you are drinking the real thing. Without the “barf” taste. Oh, and weighing in at a whole ZERO calories makes this girl pretty happy.

Cream soda. I use Diet Cream Soda, my husband detests “diet anything” about as much as I hate tequila. If we are still counting calories here, we have a big fat ZERO in my glass and 60 calories in my husband’s glass.

Lime juice and ice. Blah, blah, blah. Normal, everyday ingredients. Zero calories.

Cotton Candy. This is where it’ll get you… We have a cotton candy machine. We bought it for a State Fair party that we threw a couple of years ago. The party was fantastic! The cotton candy machine, not so much. It has a tendency to shake and shimmy its way off the counter and spit molten sugar in a ten foot radius. Seriously. When we break the thing out for some “fun” with the kids, we have to don protective gear.

I decided to grab some prepackaged cotton candy at the store tonight. A mother and her son in the check-out lane thought my daughter and I were bat shit crazy, squealing at our find and chucking the remaining cotton candy tubs into our cart. It’s hard to find. We’ve seen it occasionally in the grocery candy aisle, check out lane, or an end cap for Easter Candy (“Bunny Tails”, what the fuck?!). Once I found cotton candy at a gas station. It’s hit and miss, so if this recipe intrigues you and you happen upon some, stock up.

One two-ounce tub has two servings and makes two drinks. That includes the initial glass full of cotton candy and the clump on top. We bought both ‘Cherry Berry’ and ‘Blue Raz’ because like tequila, I have a hard time with cherry-flavored anything. Bleh. Both drinks tasted pretty good, though. And both flavors added 110 calories to the glass.

At the end of the day, my drink had 110 calories and Marty’s had 170 calories. Empty calories, yes, but it sure as hell beats the alternative: throwing punches because tequila makes you a psycho bitch named “Carl” who likes to fight, or throwing up because you can only stomach the smell for so long, or throwing your sobriety out the window for a little “fun”.

I hope you enjoy this mocktail. Give me a like or a comment to let me know you are digging these, and I will keep posting more!

NA-Cheers!

~Cari

P.S. If you are really concerned with the calories and want to be void of all fun, Clear American makes a Cotton Candy flavored Sparkling Water that can replace the Cream Soda and actual cotton candy. Not as good, not as colorful, but that substitution will remove all calories from your glass. 🙂