Pumpkin spice may be fall’s most cliched flavor thanks to Starbucks and its infamously ubiquitous PSL, but it isn’t the only candidate for seasonal standard-bearer. Apples have been coming into season each fall since ancient times, and apple cider dates back at least as far as the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, despite its historical precedence, cider doesn’t lend itself well to latte-fying, which may be part of the reason pumpkin spice took over the world. Still, this beverage deserves an indulgent concoction of its own, even if it’s something Starbucks will never add to its menu: the apple cider float.
This drink-dessert mashup is as easy to make as a root beer or Coke float: pour sparkling cider into a glass, then plop in a few scoops of vanilla ice cream. Grab a straw and a spoon and dive right in. If you want to intensify the apple flavor, you can also use a 50/50 mixture of sparkling and still cider or apple juice. If you don’t have any sparkling cider on hand, you can also combine apple juice with plain or flavored seltzer, ginger ale, or lemon-lime soda to add fizz to the float.
There are many ways to tweak this basic recipe
While we’ve just described a pretty ordinary cider float, there are lots of different ways to tinker with the basic recipe. One would be to add both fizz and booze by substituting hard cider for the sparkling kind. You could also make the float alcoholic by spiking it with an apple-friendly liquor like rum, whiskey, or applejack.
You needn’t stick with vanilla ice cream, either. Butter pecan ice cream would pair perfectly with cider, as would rum raisin, eggnog, and any flavors in the butterscotch or caramel family including dulce de leche and toffee crunch. If you have a real sweet tooth, you can even drizzle some caramel syrup into the cider or over the ice cream.
Yet another way to customize this float would be to switch up the cider for apple-cranberry, thus allowing you to introduce another fall flavor. If you add a scoop of pumpkin ice cream, you could go for the trifecta! Find a way to work in some maple cream or syrup and stick a cinnamon stick in the glass and you’ll have covered the entire autumnal spectrum. (With the possible exception of candy corn, but no, that’s a fall flavor too far.)
