These Alcoholic Strawberries Taste Like Delicious, Bite-Sized Daiquiris

When it’s good, nothing beats a strawberry daiquiri — sweet, tart, and icy cold, with a stealthy hit of booze. Sadly, strawberry daiquiris and I have a somewhat rocky history, because they all too often taste like broken promises (aka a boozy strawberry Jolly Rancher tinged with bottled lime, or the essence of college spring break).

This is all to say that when I saw this popular recipe on Food Network’s TikTok for boozy strawberries, I was skeptical. But just like I keep chasing that elusive, perfect strawberry daiquiri on vacation, I couldn’t resist trying out the edible-shot version of this beachy cocktail. Here’s what happened when I did.

Start by combining white rum and fresh-squeezed lime juice in a liquid measuring cup. Clean the strawberries and poke holes in them with a toothpick. Arrange the strawberries tightly together and upright in a loaf pan or small glass dish. Pour the rum-lime juice mixture over the top. Seal with plastic wrap and a securing layer of foil, then place them in the fridge for six hours, up to 12.

Remove and uncover the berries, straining off the liquid. Just before serving them, pour sugar into a shallow bowl. Roll each strawberry around in the mixture a few times — and quickly! — to coat them thoroughly before the sugar starts to liquify. Arrange them on a platter, and serve immediately. Each berry packs a punch—“like a special treat” — as my husband put it. Two per person should do nicely. 

Get the recipe: Strawberry Daiquiri Bites from Food Network

I admit that I initially wrote off alcoholic strawberries as one for the “Shots! Shots! Shots!” column. But I was quite delighted with the end result. Alcoholic strawberries are easy and inexpensive to make and oh-so fun. They taste like a pure, tart-sweet distillation of the beach, in a serving size befitting of this sweet, boozy tipple. I was surprised that the berries maintained their firmness even after soaking several hours in the citrus-rum mixture. As I said earlier, a little goes a long way with these bejeweled edible shots; consider kicking off a BBQ by passing around a trayful. Or, hell, quarter them and sprinkle them over vanilla ice cream, like a sundae went to the beach and got tipsy.

1. Use white rum. Bacardi Silver — clean with a nondescript cane sugary essence — is your best bet here. I also tried the mixture with some leftover Bacardi Gold and didn’t notice much of a flavor difference, except for a trace hint of caramel, which actually paired well with the berries. But save your Jamaican pot-still and barrel-aged rums for sipping neat or making proper daiquiris.
2. This recipe works best with just-ripe strawberries. Overripe ones take on a mushy, cooked texture in the booze. So if you can only find slightly under- or overripe berries, go for the underripe instead and give them an extra turn in the sugar. If you like your daiquiri bites extra citrusy, up the lime juice by 1/4 cup or so.   
3. For a boozier-tasting berry, leave them in the fridge longer. I’d stop at about 12 hours, when the fruit seems to hit its liquid intake limit. After that, I didn’t notice much of a difference, and the strawberries started to (slightly) lose their textural integrity.