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A cranberry margarita makes a great Thanksgiving or Christmas cocktail. The yummy combination of silver tequila and triple sec, along with seasonal favourites like cranberries and edible fall flowers, results in a very festive cranberry drink that everyone will adore. Add this cranberry cocktail to your party drink list this holiday season.
With silver tequila and triple sec, lime juice, grenadine, and more, this holiday margarita contrasts tart flavors of lime and cranberries with sweet grenadine.
Cocktail fans might also enjoy butterscotch white Russians, elderflower rum mojitos or what about a strawberry lime daiquiri? Treat yourself!
Cranberry Margarita Ingredients
The fruity flavours in this special holiday margarita recipe include fresh lime juice, triple sec (which tastes of orange), grenadine, cranberry juice cocktail, and cranberries. You can purchase triple sec or use this triple sec recipe to make it yourself.
Use fresh, not frozen, cranberries since they’re in season during the fall and they’re also the main flavour in the drink.
If you can either can’t find cranberry juice cocktail or you prefer to use juice, you might need to adjust the amount of grenadine to get the sweetness level right. Also bear in mind 100% cranberry juice is tarter than a mixed cocktail which might also contain apple juice or similar.
The other ingredients for this Thanksgiving or Christmas cocktail are salt, ice and optional garnishes – fresh cranberries, fresh limes or lime wedges, edible fall flowers and/or a star anise pod. Cranberry Christmas cocktail recipes like this are a seasonal favourite, so make lots!
How to Make this Festive Cranberry Drink
First of all, you’re going to add a salt rim to the glasses. To create a salted rim, run a wedge of lime around the rim of each glass, then dip it in salt until the whole rim is covered. If preferred, you could do a salted rim with the same process.
Now half-fill a cocktail shaker with ice cubes. Then add the cranberry juice, lime juice, grenadine, silver tequila, and triple sec. Shake it well then pour it into the salt-rimmed margarita glasses.
Add your choice of garnishes to this festive cranberry drink. Fresh cranberries, a star anise pod and edible fall flowers (such as chrysanthemums) make a pretty garnish. Cranberry skewers or cranberry swizzle sticks might be a nice garnish for this holiday drink, too. Even with no garnish, this is a delicious Christmas cranberry margarita recipe just like you will find in Mexican restaurants!
Tweaks and Variations
There are some changes you could make to this Christmas cranberry margarita if you want. To make a non-alcoholic version of this festive cocktail, you could use orange juice in place of the silver tequila and triple sec.
If you’re making this as anything other than a Christmas cranberry margarita, you might not be able to find seasonal fresh cranberries. Since they’re just used for an optional garnish, you can sub frozen ones.
Another tweak is swapping the grenadine for simple syrup or agave syrup. That will change the colour a little but it will still look reddish from the cranberry juice cocktail mix.
Where do you Get Edible Fall Flowers From?
Although this ingredient is optional and just for garnish, you might like to use edible flowers. They’re so cute and give the holiday margarita recipe a festive, extra-special look. But where do you buy them?
You have the choice of growing your own (preferably not where the dog goes potty!), ordering them online. Alternately, you can also find at the farmers’ market.
You can also use clean artificial flowers as a garnish. I also love the idea of freezing ice cubes with a whole cranberry added to each one? There are many different garnish options for this drink.
Cranberry Margarita FAQs
It’s fine to make it up to 3 days in advance, as long as you don’t add the ice until just before serving because it will melt and dilute the festive cranberry drink.
This red syrup plays a role in many cocktail recipes such as rum runners. It also goes into desserts like tropical popsicles where you want to add a sweet, fruity flavour and a red colour.
It used to be prepared using a pomegranate juice base and you can get true grenadine made of pomegranate juice, sugar and lemon juice. Alternatively, the cheaper varieties are made with sugar or HFCS, food colouring and citric acid. You can always sub simple syrup if you don’t want to use grenadine.
Festive Cranberry Margarita Recipe
Festive Cranberry Margarita
Ingredients
- 1 Wedge lime
- coarse salt, for rim
- 3 Ounces cranberry juice cocktail
- 1½ Ounces tequila, silver, such as El Mayor Tequila Blanco
- 1 Ounce triple sec, such as DeKuyper Triple Sec
- ½ Ounce lime juice, freshly-squeezed
- ½-1 Tablespoon grenadine
- ice
- cranberries, fresh, for garnish (optional)
- edible fall flower, for garnish (optional)
- star anise, for garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Swipe a lime wedge around the rim of your glass. Holding the glass at a 45-degree angle, dip the dampened rim of the glass into the coarse salt, rotating it until salt covers the entire rim.
- Fill a cocktail shaker about halfway with ice. Add cranberry juice, tequila, triple sec, lime juice, and grenadine. Shake to combine until the shaker feels ice cold (10 to 20 seconds). Pour into rimmed glass. Garnish with fresh cranberries, an edible fall flower (I used a Chrysanthemum), and/or a star anise pod, if desired.
Nutrition
A cranberry margarita is beautifully balanced in terms of sweetness and tartness. This festive margarita is gorgeous and will be a holiday favourite. It’s really tasty and easy to make as well! Consider this seasonal cocktail for Thanksgiving or even the winter holidays this year. A Christmas cranberry margarita recipe is always a holiday favourite.
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Bella Bucchiotti
Bella Bucchiotti is a Canadian-based syndicated food, travel, and lifestyle writer, photographer, and creator at xoxoBella. She founded xoxoBella in 2015, where she shares her love for food, dogs, sustainability, fitness, crafts, outdoor adventures, travel, and philanthropy to encourage others to run the extra mile, try new recipes, visit unfamiliar places, and stand for a cause. Bella creates stress-free and family-friendly recipes for weeknight dinners and festive feasts.
Just when I thought the classic Marg recipe couldn’t be improved on, along comes this fun twist on my favorite Mexican cocktail! Yummy
My favorite margarita! Will have to find the flowers because they are so cute with it