The Cocktail Pantry Twists Series is made in partnership with Stonewall Kitchen. Recipe and ideas are my own.
Hello and welcome to my pantry. Yes, my actual pantry.
In these cold weather months, sometimes it’s hard to come across some fresh ingredients to make drinks with. Or the ones we find at the store are flying here from thousands of miles away and, well, come with a hefty price tag too. So to beat those winter blues, we’ve teamed up with Stonewall Kitchen, who have been gracing my shelves for years (Like almost two decades now. I. AM. OLD.), to add some great flavors to our drinks with their assortment of jams and condiments.
I’ll be taking over their Instagram Stories on Friday the 6th to share some how-to videos and be a talking head, but you all get the recipes here first! And there’s three this week! Also, I’ll be having a giveaway Friday as well on my IG page and you’ll have a chance to win ALL the products to make the recipes with. It’s like getting a holiday basket delivered to your door except better because you’ll be able to make cocktails with everything inside.
First up in the series of cocktail pantry twists is a Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly Margarita made with Stonewall Kitchen’s Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly. It’s holiday time and I love the sweet-tart cranberries that are a ubiquitous part of the season. And I love a Spicy Marg too. This cocktail mixes up blanco tequila with a sweet, spicy, and sour flavor profile. It’s bursting with delicious ingredients and I think it’s just the drink to kick up our taste buds when we are craving those juicy fruit flavors.
Now, since your grocery store may or may not have citrus (even though winter is when citrus is in season!), and we’re all hanging out together in my pantry, I’ve got a few substitutions for fresh lime juice below. Now some might seem a bit out there, but this is also keeping in mind that you’re using cranberries in this Margarita and they have their own sourness, so you can mellow the citrus out a bit and use something like orange juice.
No limes? Try these alternatives:
- Meyer Lemons
- Orange Juice
- Organic, all natural bottled lime juice
- Lemonade
Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly Margarita
- 1-1/2 ounces blanco tequila
- 1 tablespoon Stonewall Kitchen Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly
- 3/4 ounce orange liqueur
- 1/2 freshly squeezed lime juice (or a substitution from the list above)
- kosher salt for rim
First, take a lime wedge and wet the edge of a rocks glass, and then roll the outer edge of the glass in the salt. Set aside. In a shaker 2/3 filled with ice, pour in the tequila, the Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly, orange liqueur, and the lime juice. Shake hard 20 seconds and then strain into the rocks glass. Garnish with a small spoon topped with additional Hot Pepper Cranberry Jelly. Enjoy!
See you tomorrow for the next recipe in our series!
This post was made in partnership with Tequila Cazadores. Recipes and ideas are my own.
We’ve all seen those wacky watermelon kegs (ahem, I may have even enticed you to buy one on this site before too), but what if you want the watermelon experience and there’s only two of you? Get yourself a mini seedless watermelon and hollow half of it. Boom! It’s like a very convenient and way less expensive tiki bowl. Then you can use the insides of the watermelon flesh to make Spicy Watermelon Margaritas… for two of you. You don’t need to remove any seeds or even cut it into pieces. And that very recipe we have down below.
You know what’s also exciting? It’s National Tequila Day! Today, and maybe National Margarita Day, might be some of my very favorite drink holidays. I mean, I’m not waiting to have a Spicy Marg on just these occasions, but the reminder sure doesn’t hurt. I’ll be celebrating today with 
And to ensure my friends also will have something delicious to drink today, I’m sending out a few tequila bags via special delivery…which would be me in my car. If you head on over to my Instagram page today you can see those bags in action, literally (
Ok! Let’s go break open some watermelons!
Citrus Salt
*If you’d like to see how to make dehydrated citrus wheels, check out our 
This post is brought to you by Tequila Cazadores.
Out of all the drink holidays out there, this is probably one of my favorites. Why? Well, who can say no to a Margarita?! Well made and they’re a perfect blend of sweet and sour, and as I mentioned earlier in the week… SO riffable. To help celebrate, I’ve teamed up with 
Cazadores has been one of my go-to tequilas for quite some time. It’s super reasonably priced but it’s also 100% blue agave—not mixed! Cazadores has five types of tequila in their portfolio: Blanco, Reposado, Añejo, Extra Añejo, and Cristalino; for today’s recipe we’ll be using the Blanco (you’ll recognize the bottle by its hint of blue and the stag gracing the front). Because we’re making a mixed drink, the Blanco expression is the perfect product. It’s light, clean taste has a slightly sweet finish that highlights the agave. It also makes for a balanced cocktail so you taste all the components.
Now, I can take a bit of heat and I love the play of spicy and sweet here. That said, you can totally adjust this to your spiciness level. Want more spicy? Keep the seeds in the jalapeño slice and add two if you’d like. Just want a hint of spice? Take out the seeds and don’t garnish with a second jalapeño slice (the longer the garnish sits in your glass, the more spice it imparts to your drink! Remember that!).
If you’re visiting Los Angeles, or happen to already be a resident, and want to find a bar with a decent jukebox, I have a few I can recommend. There’s my beloved 
I always have my favorite songs and will seriously put on $20 worth of music; alright, alright, I’m a total jukebox hog. Footsie’s in particular I always start with the Cisco Kid by War. I have no idea why, I just like to start my set off with that. I heard that song out of the blue the other day and have been reminiscing about jukebox playlists ever since. That song is also probably why I’ve created this cocktail.
You’ve read on here before my thoughts on pisco- it’s a versatile mixing spirit that I don’t think gets enough credit. I’ve also used the base recipe for a pisco sour to show you how you can use BEER! as an 
You might not be a vegan but you might be someone who cringes at the thought of an egg white in a cocktail. Even though most bars are either using pasteurized egg whites or eggs from their own back yard chickens (I’m sure that’s a thing) to prevent salmonella from entering your cocktail. Still, I get it, you don’t want to drink the egg whites. So now you can give Instafoam a try. But won’t it just make the cocktail taste all chemically? NO! I know way back in the dark days when there was only Fee Foam you were going to get a weird aftertaste (and I’m not knocking on Fee Brothers, they were a beacon of bitters in a world that didn’t understand the need yet.) but here you just taste the cocktail.
Yes, this is a riff on pisco sour cocktail. We’ve got the usual culprits: pisco, lime juice, simple syrup, bitters. However, we’ve spiced it up a bit with the addition of jalapeño jam. I often add marmalade or something of the sort to a whiskey sour just to give it an extra layer of flavor. Here it does the same with a spicy, slightly sweet bite with just a bit of earthy aftertaste from those peppers.
and I have been looking for a cocktail to use them in. I had sampled the Memphis bitters at 
on here). Pour unstrained into the rocks glass. Finish with the lime wedge garnish.