"Despite our better judgment, my wife and I decided to give this a try and bring it to a post-Thanksgiving party. We followed the simple syrup recipe and used vanilla vodka (not Smirnoff), but didn't use the optional candy and had to substitute raspberry seltzer because we couldn't find cranberry. We were both pleasantly surprised that this was actually a tasty cocktail. We found that we had to experiment on how much simple syrup to add to make sure it wasn't too sweet (too much simple syrup) or too vanilla-y (not enough simple syrup). While it's not something I would like to drink all of the time, it's a nice twist for the holidays.