Recipe Review: Frozen Strawberry Margaritas

A whirring sound fills my kitchen, drowning out the voices in the lounge and every other sound in the house. I wince as I see liquid seeping from the ancient blender and hear the ice rattling around unscathed by the blades. It's quite possible that I filled it too high, but it's equally possible that this machine just can't handle ice cubes and frozen strawberries like it used to. It was my grandmother's after all, and I am fairly sure that it is older than I am. Before I know it, my kitchen is a pink, sticky, alcoholic mess. But that's okay! We weren't planning on spending too much time in there anyway!

The idea for the cocktail evening came about a few months ago when I went out with Kath, Rosa and Emma for some cocktails at the Yellow House (which has an awesome selection of truly amazing cocktails) and found that we would need to pitch in about R100 each for two cocktails. Totally not worth it! It would be far better, we decided, if we were to pitch in about R50 each, go out and buy ingredients and then make our own cocktails. It took a few months to find a night that suited people, but it finally happened and it was most fun and awesome, although we didn't end up having as many cocktails as we would have liked as it was the middle of the month and we were all broke.

No matter, I decided that I was going to spend the last of my cash on the ingredients for frozen strawberry margaritas. Why this cocktail specifically? Well, I'd bought frozen strawberries quite awhile ago in an attempt to be healthy and make supremely awesome smoothies for breakfast on a daily basis. Sadly, this never happened, and I got left with a bag of frozen strawberries living in my freezer, taking up space and annoying my housemates. So I decided to finally do something with them. I looked up how to make frozen strawberry margaritas and found the following recipe:

1.5oz Silver tequila

1 oz Orange liqueur (or Triple Sec)
1 oz Lime Juice or Concentrate

1 cup Frozen or fresh strawberries

1 cup Ice cubes

I went out and bought the tequila (though we ended up buying white rather than silver since I don't know the difference and I don't really think that it matters considering that we were mixing it with other alcohol rather than having it straight), Triple Sec and lime concentrate as well as some Rosé wine just in case, which came to a total of R225. You may be looking at that and thinking: "Good God! So expensive!" But then you should also consider that I ended up making 7 cocktails, and having a ton of alcohol left over. The only reason we didn't make more is that the strawberries ran out. Boo!

So, how did they turn out? Aside from them having pretty large bits of ice (occasionally whole ice cubes) or frozen strawberry (which I completely blame on the ancient blender described at the start of this post), I thought they were pretty damn good! Strong, but good. Messy, but good. Overall, a success! I would recommend finding a good blender to make them with, however, and I know that I will be doing just that next time around.

The rest of the night was spent watching Bridesmaids (again) at Kath and Emma's request, drinking frozen strawberry margaritas, snacking on rice crackers, cucumber, celery and dip and playing board games. The boys arrived back from Oktoberfest celebrations around midnight to find us playing 30 Seconds, and then insisted that their team of 3 could kick our team of 4's ass. Which we quickly disproved. Mike then insisted on trying to kick our asses 2-to-4, refusing to let any girl join his team to make things a little more even. Needless to say, he was put to shame. He then finally relented, letting Kath become and honorary boy and a final game ensued, which Vicky, Emma and I won in any case. Because we rock. So does Kath, but that's not the point.

The girls (and boy) finally decided to call it a night around 1am and we all decided that this was an event that was going to have to become monthly. Which is just fine by me, especially since I have half a bottle of Tequila and half a bottle of Triple Sec that I don't intend to get through any time soon! So watch this space for more information on another girly evening coming soon!