Watch your step. Holiday season snuck right up on us again. Just as we stood up from prying the squirrel-nibbled pumpkins off the patio, the holidays were staring us straight in the face. From here on it’s a slippery slope of parties, visitors, events and hastily concocted reasons to gather right through January 2. Are you ready? Do you need a drink? This could help.

Let’s ease into this transition by taking a summer standby and winterizing it. Meet the ginger beer margarita. I stumbled across this while going down the Internet rabbit hole in pursuit of butternut squash tacos. Did I mention the slippery slope? After some exhaustive testing of ginger beers, following the comments on Minimalist Baker, I can definitely recommend the lighter ones like Fever Tree. It IS a margarita after all.

These are the easiest drinks in the world to make. You can get fancy and line the rim with lime juice and salt, or you can a just make the darned drinks. You can stir the ingredients together in a cocktail shaker with ice and strain, as directed, or you can just stir them up up in a pitcher, and pour over ice in each glass giving each drink another good stir. Just save yourself the anxiety and the outfit change and DO NOT shake them in a cocktail shaker. Remember the volcano experiment in 2^nd grade? Yep.

A quick brush up on simple syrup: Combine equal parts sugar and water. Stir to dissolve sugar, heat to boiling, and let cool. Keep some stored in your fridge at all times, in case of emergency.

The best part about this drink, from a social perspective, is that you can easily bring the parts and assemble on site, AND the ginger beer makes a festive non-alcoholic drink as well (see top picture). For more ideas you can always revisit these fine drinks from last year.

Ginger Beer Margaritas

From Minimalist Baker, and adapted for high volume

Ingredients

Single serving version

• 1.5 ounces (3 Tablespoons) 100% agave tequila
• 1 ounce (2 Tbsp) fresh lime juice
• 3 ounces (6 Tbsp) ginger beer (Fever Tree regular or light are awesome)
• .5 ounce (1 Tbsp) simple syrup
• Coarse salt for lining rim (also optional and fancy)

Team player version, for four

• ¾ cup tequila
• ½ cup fresh lime juice
• 1 ½ cups ginger beer
• 4 Tbsp simple syrup
• coarse salt

Method

1. If you’re feeling fancy, Line a small serving glass with fresh lime juice and dip in coarse salt
2. Add tequila, simple syrup, ginger beer and lime juice to a large glass (single serve) or cocktail shaker (let’s not drink alone) with lots of ice and stir vigorously. Don’t shake with a lid on!
3. Pour liquid (reserving ice) into serving glass with a few ice cubes Garnish with a lime wedge and serve immediately. Repeat for more drinks, or double/triple the amounts for more people.

What to do with your leftover ginger beer, once you have settled in on “the one.” Here’s an idea. Pour it over these cranberry rosemary ice cubes that you made for Cran-rosemary prosecco punch, which is basically equal parts prosecco and white cranberry juice, a splash of bitters and these fancy ice cubes.  The fancy ice cubes also winterize the flavored seltzer you can’t help from buying on every trip to the store. Did I mention it’s a slippery slope?