Chambord Raspberry Margarita

After a long week, and another long week looming, my husband I decided Saturday night to kick back after the kids were in bed!

Several years ago we had a restaurant here in town called Z’Tejas Southwestern Grill. Sadly, they’ve since left the state and took with them one of the best drinks I’d ever had — a Chambord Raspberry Margarita.

One day I was hunting around online, browsing through a couple of those “secret recipe” websites that supposedly reveal the secret ingredients and methods restaurants use to prepare certain dishes, and came across one for the margarita.

I printed it out but it sat in my recipe folder for a long time, until I went through and cleaned it out last week. I couldn’t bring myself to toss the recipe, even though we hadn’t tried it yet, so I tucked it back in, and when my husband suggested we watch a movie and relax Saturday night I dug that puppy out.

We had everything we needed except the Chambord raspberry liqueur, which I’d never been able to find and wasn’t even sure where to find it. After some quick Google-fu, my husband dashed off to get it and I mixed up the margarita. Problem was, it needed to go into the freezer for a while, get stirred, sit in the freezer a little longer, get stirred again, etc. We had started so late in the evening that unless we wanted to wait until the next night it just wasn’t going to happen.

My husband then had the brilliant idea of putting the margarita mix in the ice cream maker, and voila, we had slush the perfect consistency within about 20 minutes!

Chambord Raspberry Margarita

4 cups warm water
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup lime juice
2/3 cup lemon juice
10 oz gold tequila
5 oz triple sec
Chambord raspberry liqueur

Combine the sugar and warm water and stir until sugar is completely dissolved. Add lime and lemon juices, tequila, and triple sec. If making way ahead of time, pour into a pitcher, stick it in the freezer, let it freeze up a bit and give it a stir every now and then so it’s slushy. (This is a great plain margarita.)

If you’ve got an electric ice cream maker, pour the mix in and run it for about 20 minutes, or until it’s thick and slushy. Transfer to a pitcher.

Pour about 1/2 an ounce of Chambord (a little goes a long way!) into the bottom of a glass and spoon or pour the frozen margarita over it. (This recipe halves well.)