Sweet of the Week: Cotton Candy Cosmo at Sugar Factory American Brasserie

Personally, desserts and cocktails don't normally go together too smoothly. For fear of cloying excess and impending hangover, the dessert course is the time for me to skew away from liquor and cap things off with coffee. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Or rather, when at Sugar Factory American Brasserie, drink candy cocktails. The drinks masquerade as dessert at this treacly Rosemont wonderland, where Britney Spears imagery and faux red carpets serve as standard decor and the food menu features red velvet pancakes as dinner options. As overwhelmingly sweet as everything is, the environment really sets the pace, and it would be silly not to oblige. In my case, that meant having a neon-hued Cotton Candy Cosmo as my drink du jour.  

 

There's just something so righteous about sipping a sugary cocktail garnished with a dome of cotton candy while watching a reel of celebrities hawking blinged out lollipops. It may sound excessive, and it kind of is, but the experience is undoubtedly memorable. And the drink isn't much sweeter than a regular thing of cotton candy at the state fair. So as long as you're in that same quirky mindset, open to throwing caution to the wind, it goes down just fine. It's made with Pinnacle Cotton Candy Vodka and a poof of cotton candy, and unsurprisingly it tastes exactly like a drinkable cone of lustrous sugar. What makes it especially fun and playful is the bright blue and pink colors, and of course the powerful nostalgia factory. It lends new meaning to the phrase "kid in a candy store." 

- Matt Kirouac