My friend Melina is the cocktail queen! She and her husband always make us discover fun new cocktails, alcohols and garnishes when they host us for dinner – they totally put Franco and me to shame with their drink game!

Whenever she hosts girls nights, this is her go-to cocktail to serve. It’s fresh, it’s delicious, and relatively low-cal. It has quickly become the girls’ favourite and we have all inherited this recipe from Melina, making it rare for there to be a get-together where this isn’t served (at any of our homes!).

Because this recipe requires a lot of limes, if you’re making it for a many people, you can alternatively also use bottle 100% lime juice. It may be more sour than if you use fresh limes, but I can understand how some may not want to stock their fridge with 50 limes!… But fresh is always definitely better.

Add some jalapeño slices and give it a spicy kick (my fave), you can even garnish the rim with my rim salt recipe, or even better, with some Tajin, if you have some on-hand.

Cheers! XX

Melina’s Margarita (skinny!)

Print Recipe

Course Drinks

Servings 1 cocktail

Equipment

Drink Shaker

Ingredients

ice
2 limes juiced
2 oz tequila
2 oz Cointreau or triple sec
2 tsp agave syrup
sprinkle of salt

Optional

To make it a spicy margarita, add a few slices of jalapeno. For an added flavour kick, add some passion fruit pulp.

For an optional salted rim

1 tbsp coarse salt
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp lime zest
1 lime wedge

Instructions

If salting the rim

Mix together the salt, chili powder, and lime zest in a flat dish
Rub the lime wedge along the rim of the glass to moisten
Turn your glass face down onto the plate, to coat the rim of the glass in the salt mixture

For the drink

Place all ingredients in a shaker with ice and shake vigorously.
Optionally rim your glass with salt.
Pour over a glass with ice.
Top with a garnish of lime wedge, jalapeno slice, or any garnish of your choosing.