When summer’s at its hottest, nothing’s better than a frosty drink. Just pouring your cocktail over ice won’t cut it—you need to break out the blender. Blurring the line between cocktail and dessert, frozen drinks are the ultimate in summer refreshment. We’ve rounded up our favorite frozen cocktail recipes to help you beat the heat.
Sweet, tart, and refreshing, the margarita is the king of the frozen cocktail. In 1971, Dallas restaurateur Mariano Martinez created the first frozen margarita machine out of a soft-serve ice cream machine. The drink has been a staple of Tex-Mex meals and spring break parties ever since. The basic recipe of tequila, lime, and triple sec is ripe for variation—try using tequila infused with prickly pears.
Another classic frozen drink is the piña colada, a tropical cocktail of cream of coconut, pineapple, and a mix of light and dark rums. The Blackberry Blast is a refreshing tropical drink made with blackberries, lime, and agricole rum—a type of rum made from fresh sugarcane.
A traditional daiquiri is a mixture of white rum, sugar, and lime juice served neat. With a little creativity, it can be transformed into all sorts of delicious frozen cocktails. Adding coconut rum and mango sorbet makes a mango daiquiri; adding strawberries, banana, and heavy cream gets you a dessert-like drink called the Beach Towel.
Find all these drinks and more in our collection of frozen cocktail recipes.
In 1971 Mariano Martinez figured out how to make frozen margaritas from a soft serve ice cream machine—the rest is history. We recommend using Herradura Silver Tequila for this refreshing variation.
A classic Peruvian cocktail gets the freezer treatment. Made with the South American grape brandy that’s popular in Chile and Peru, the pisco sour makes for a salty, sweet, tart, and beautiful sorbet.
Punch Romaine, a rum-spiked shaved-ice palate cleanser served to first class passengers during the fateful last dinner aboard the Titanic on April 14th, 1912, was based on a recipe from famed French chef Georges Auguste Escoffier, who championed alcoholic shaved ices during the early twentieth century. The original recipe, essentially a granita, is updated here as a drinkable, citrusy cocktail poured over an iceberg of crushed ice.
Sgroppino, a slushy combination of lemon sorbet, vodka, and prosecco, is common in Italy as a palate cleanser, a dessert, or a pre-dinner drink.
The prickly pear cactus thrives in the deserts of the American Southwest; its bulbous red fruit is prized for many Mexican and Tex-Mex preparations. This legendary margarita, which takes its distinctive flavor from the fruit, comes from bartender Ruben Bernal at Las Canarias restaurant in San Antonio, Texas.
