Skinny Cranberry Margaritas (2024)

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This Skinny Cranberry Margarita recipe is the perfect balance between healthy and indulgent. No added sugar or artificial sweeteners, no syrups, but full of flavor and natural sweetness with about 100 calories.

This recipe is light and bubbly and just as good without the tequila. It’s a perfect low calorie holiday co*cktail, but I make these any time of year–not just during the holiday season.

I’m always looking for low calorie tequila drinks, since I don’t care to drink anything super sweet or heavy. Even with a couple of candied cranberries, these margaritas aren’t too sweet–they make the best low calorie Christmas co*cktail.

This recipe is considered healthy because it has just a few simple ingredients–sparkling water (you could also use club soda, but I haven’t seen flavored club sodas so I stick with the water), fresh limes, tequila (or vodka!), and cranberry juice.

I didn’t add orange juice, sugar, or other liqueur options because to be honest this recipe doesn’t need them. This is a delicious sugar free, artificial sweetener free cranberry co*cktail. Whether you’re looking for a skinny poolside co*cktail or a low calorie holiday drink, this recipe is simple and refreshing!

Ingredients

• Sparkling water: Plain sparkling water like Perrier is great, but I really enjoy the extra flavor of flavored sparkling water. Just be sure whatever you choose doesn’t have any sugars or artificial sweeteners.
• Tequila: Be sure and use a good quality tequila. Lower quality tequilas often have extra ingredients that you probably don’t want to be drinking (man, I could write an entire post on that!). Cazadores, Don Julio, and Herradura are great options that you can find in your local grocery store.For this recipe, I prefer silver tequila.
• Cranberry juice: Look for 100% juice. A lot of bottled cranberry juice contains sugar so be sure and read your label.
• Fresh Lime juice From freshly squeezed limes, of course ;)

Quick Instructions

1. If you’d like to drink this co*cktail over ice, add ice, tequila, lime juice, and cranberry juice to your glass. Fill to the top with sparkling water and enjoy!
2. If you’d rather shake this co*cktail, add ice to a glass and the following ingredients to a co*cktail shaker: tequila, lime juice, and cranberry juice. Shake for 15 seconds, then pour over ice. Top with chilled sparkling water.

Recipe Tips

• For a little added sweetness, rim the glass with lime juice and coat with raw sugar. I don’t often do this, but every once in a while it’s fun to. If you are serving these to someone who prefers sweet, go ahead and add a splash of simple syrup.
• For a festive presentation, add 3 whole cranberries to a toothpick for a garnish. If you want to make sugared cranberries like I did for these pictures you can, but know that this will bump it out of the 100 calorie range.
• This recipe is great over ice or shaken and poured.
• Not feeling the alcohol? Skip the tequila and enjoy the delicious mocktail version.
• Not loving the Sparkling Cranberry Margarita? You can use still water instead of sparkling!
• This is a perfect co*cktail to serve alongside your Thanksgiving dinner.

Healthy Eating Plans

If you’re on a healthy eating plan, this should fit right into it. As a 21 Day Fix margarita it fits perfectly as a treat swap (any alcohol is a treat swap). As a Weight Watchers margarita, it’s a low point co*cktail–just 4 points on all plans.

If this co*cktail doesn’t fit into your healthy eating plan, the mocktail version of this recipe might work better for you–simply leave the alcohol out of the recipe and enjoy!

More skinny co*cktail recipes

One of my favorite things to do is take naturally flavored sparkling water and make different co*cktails with it. I have several made for you to spark your creativity on how you can use the same sparking water to make lower calorie versions of your favorite co*cktails–these are all right around 100 calories.

• Ginger Cranberry Mule To make this a lower calorie Moscow Mule, use 1/4 cup ginger beer, tequila or vodka, lime, and then fill the rest of the glass with sparkling water (flavored or unflavored).
• Vodka Popsicles with Lemonade
• White and Red Wine Popsicles
• Strawberry Bubble Tea Margaritas
• 100 Calorie Peach Margarita
• Skinny Watermelon Margarita
• Pineapple Margarita
• Skinny Pina Colada
• Apple Cider Margarita To make this low cal, reduce the apple cider to 1/4 cup and leave out the Schnapps.