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Welcome to the next entry in my series of Pride cocktails inspired by drag performers. This week’s cocktail is inspired by the incomparable Adore Delano aka Dani Noriega. Specifically her look in one of my favorite music videos “Hello, I Love You” (see background/inspiration).
Be sure to follow Adore on all the various social media.
Background/Inspiration
Adore Delano aka Dani Noriega first came on my radar during Season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race where they immediately stole my heart. Adore has this laid-back, unassuming presence that melts away into an incredibly talented singer and performer when on stage.
This particular cocktail was inspired by the iconic music video for “Hello, I Love You”, which if you haven’t seen it, go watch it and come back: https://youtu.be/52KmnKb0XJI
Adore continues to put out bops and bangers all while being unapologetically themselves, never giving up what feels right and true to her and her artistic vision to fit into *cough* someone else’s idea of what a drag performer should look like and dress. It’s no wonder Adore’s fans are fiercely loyal and protective, how could you not be.
Also, if you haven’t seen the videos someone made putting Adore quotes from RuPaul’s Drag Race over footage of LSP from Adventure Time, you’re really missing out. https://youtu.be/2DqK_IhZjzQ
Cocktail Journey
So full disclosure, I had an entirely different cocktail inspired by an entirely different drag performer ready for this week, but a crucial element for the garnish was delayed in shipping so I had to fast-track this one.
Luckily it all came together really well and I’m very proud of the result.
Homemade margaritas are always so much better tasting than ones made with commercially made mix and I find they’re less likely to give me the severe gut rot/acid reflux that comes from whatever they put in those mixes to make them shelf stable.
I find most recipes online for homemade margaritas still involve squeezing a ton of limes, and then they just throw the rest away. I discovered a long time ago that adding the zest of citrus fruit as well as their juice greatly amplifies their taste and you can use far less juice. I also recently stumbled on Nickle Morris’ recipe for Super Juice which seems to have taken that general idea and created a form of lime juice that doesn’t go bad in a couple of days.
And while I will definitely be trying his recipe soon, I wanted to create an all-in-one margarita mix that can be made ahead of time (this mix will last at least a week in the fridge, and probably much longer but I finished all my small test batches pretty quickly making margaritas for my friends.)
Because I didn’t have the time to wait for new ingredients that needed to be shipped, I used some of the dragon fruit I had left from the Tronsky Montell pinkest cocktail and items I could find at my tiny local grocery store. It’s also super hot out now and I was craving margaritas.
I originally wanted the blue component to be just a float on top, but it insisted on sinking to the bottom and looking weird, so I busted out my ninja blender to make a smaller batch of blended ice.
For the garnish, I noticed that the margarita resembled the colors of the bisexual pride flag. As our Adore is gender non-conforming and pansexual, I added a yellow glitter lime wheel as a nod to the pansexual pride flag.
I hope you enjoy it!
Cocktail Recipe (makes about 8 10oz pink homemade margaritas)
For the Mix (can be made at least one week in advance):
- 4 small-medium limes
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp citric acid
- 1 orange
- 2 tbsp dragon fruit powder (optional)
- 1 1/2 cups cold water
- In a bowl add sugar, citric acid, and salt. Stir to combine.
- Zest the limes and orange into the mixture and let sit for about an hour so sugar can pull out all the tasty citrus oils.
- Juice the limes (I just ate the rest of the orange)
- Add the lime juice and water to the rested sugar mixture.
- Sprinkle with dragon fruit powder (if you want to make plain margaritas, skip this step)
- Blitz it with an immersion blender.
- Pour the mixture through a fine strainer to catch any large pieces of zest.
- If making in advance, store in fridge in a sealed container.
For the Margaritas (depending on your blender size/strength you may want to make half batches)
- 2 cups silver tequila (I used Milagro)
- 2 cups ultimate pink homemade Margarita Mix
- Lots of ice.
- 1 cup Blue Tropical Pucker (Blue Curacao can be substituted but I wanted it to stay sour)
- In a large blender add about a cup of ice for each cocktail (I like mine a little thicker, but you can experiment to your own preferences). For a sweeter margarita you can substitute some of the ice with frozen strawberries.
- Add tequila and mix and blend until smooth and no large chunks of ice remain.
- Fill a bullet blender with ice and add Blue Pucker. Blend until smooth. (I used this Ninja blender because it was rated highly for crushing ice.)
- Fill a margarita glass almost to the top with the pink and top off with some of the blue.
- Optional garnish: Yellow glitter lime wheel. 💗💛💙 (if you know, you know.)
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