Apple Smash

Boxes and Booze

Oct 31

Apple Smash cocktail with apple dice garnish — Apple Smash

I’ve had particular set of dice sitting on top of my vermouth fridge (you have one of those too, I’m sure) for a long time. You may have seen pictures of “mixology dice” like these, maybe you even have a set yourself. They are more novelty than anything else, and as a purveyor of the finer points of liquid culinary craft (ie cocktail snob) I eschewed actually making a cocktail with them. I always thought they could be good for making really bad cocktails, perhaps as part of a dubious party challenge I might subject my guests to someday. But making a cocktail with actual dice, to toast the Dice Box, seemed too perfect an opportunity to pass up. So, I rolled the dice.

Apple Smash cocktail ingredients — how to get smashed

These particular “mixology dice” allow you to choose a subset of dice from the larger pile, depending on what type of cocktail you want to make. Which is at least a more promising approach than one size fits all. I decided to make a seasonal smash, so had to select the appropriate dice from the set which included one for the base spirit (I rolled brandy and decided to use apple brandy), one for the fruit (apple, which is why I went with apple brandy), one for the citrus (initially I rolled grapefruit, didn’t have any, rolled again and got lime – yes I cheated a little), one for the sweetener (I rolled “jam”, which is actually a fun way to sweeten a cocktail, but all I had was strawberry jam, which seemed wrong here but turned out really well), and finally one for the “herb” (basil, a really nice touch). A splash of sparkling water finishes the drink, which turned out to be, well, smashing! The cocktail was remarkably good! I’m still not convinced that every roll will yield a winner, but hey, that’s the nature of gambling, after all. Cheers.