Why Tequila Should Be Your Go-To For A Fun, Boozy Summer Sorbet

If frozen margaritas become your go-to drink order the minute daylight saving time hits and you keep your freezer stocked with frozen treats year-round, there is a boozy treat just for you. Tequila or, even more specifically, margarita sorbet marries each of those festive elements in one perfect dessert or anytime refreshment. And you can make it as simple or complex as you wish.

Can you literally just pour a couple of ounces of tequila and a dash of Cointreau over a scoop of lime sorbet, like a kind of photonegative affogato? Yes, and this would be darling served in a properly salted margarita glass. You can also simply mix the liquor with a store-bought sorbet, but if you add enough to actually catch a buzz (likely the point of this whole endeavor) you'll veer closer to a smoothie-type texture than the scoopable stuff of imagination. This would be fine for sipping in the sun but is probably not quite what you intended. For something more identifiable as sorbet, you should consider making it from scratch.

You can make a quick, no-churn sorbet with little more than your freezer and fruit or juice. Juice alone will produce an icier blend compared to the relative creaminess you'd get with something like pureed frozen mangos, but it still makes for a pleasantly refreshing dupe. To stick with the margarita theme, Santa Cruz Organic bottles an excellent lime juice that's just as good as fresh squeezed. You should also use a tequila you'd actually want to drink on its own, but skip the fancier sipping tequilas this time. Freezing will reduce some of the spirit's finer notes.

The whole 16-ounce bottle of organic lime juice combined with about 8 to 10 ounces of simple syrup and 4 or 5 ounces of tequila will ultimately create several servings of boozy sorbet with a lower ABV than your standard margarita. Once it's all mixed together, you'll just need to freeze it overnight in an airtight container to finish. You can play with the proportions, but the more tequila (or less juice) you use, the softer your formula will turn out, given alcohol's low freezing point. Of course, making boozy sorbet might also be among the things you didn't know your ice cream maker could do, in which case you can follow the machine's instructions for a final product that's even closer to what you might find in a cardboard pint.