By Emily Dawson, Food Blogger, Recipe Developer, PhotographerPublished on 18 June 2026

200+ recipes developed and tested in her home kitchen before publishing on British Kitchen Hub.

Reviewed against our editorial standards.

Simple Strawberry Daiquiri Recipe

Jump to recipe5 mins prep0 mins cookMakes 1 cocktail

Simple Strawberry Daiquiri Recipe You get a no-fuss four-ingredient strawberry daiquiri with white rum, fresh strawberries, lime juice, and sugar. No strawberry liqueur, no boxed mix, and not a blender full of ice making it into an icy slushy unless you're doing that type of drink. The basic daiquiri is rum, lime, and sugar. Replace some of the lime with pureed strawberry, and this becomes a summer-in-a-glass cocktail without that saccharine pink faux flavor many commercial bar offerings prior to June 21st have relied upon. If possible, use ripe strawberries at room temperature. Cold fruit is straight from the fridge, which mutes flavor. If instead you're thinking of making a frozen slushie, two methods will work: shake it with ice and strain into a pre-chilled glass to achieve a clean, cold drink or blend it up shortly (don't go nuts). Both take about 5 minutes. The shaken style also allows you to include more rum and lime with each sip. The radius setting is less chilly and more snuggly. A way to get around that is with 15 ml of sugar or simple syrup; taste as you pour. Strawberries are not all sweet, and a batch of tart berries requires more sugar than a bag of ripe ones picked the same day.

Prep

5 mins

Cook

0 mins

Servings

Makes 1 cocktail

Difficulty

Easy

Simple Strawberry Daiquiri Recipe

The strawberry daiquiris you get in bars will be vague blurs of pink sweetness. They taste even less like strawberry and more like strawberry flavouring. In this version, with fresh fruit, lime juice and rum. That's the whole list.

The daiquiri itself is an ancient Cuban recipe: rum, lime and sugar. At Cuba's Floridita, we drank them, and they were the same as Hemingway downed, except for less sugar and twice the rum. This strawberry version is an American addition from the 1980s, when one-step frozen cocktail machines became a thing in chains. The good ones follow the same logic as before. Balance sour, sweet, and spirits. Don't let one ingredient dominate.

This is where fresh strawberries matter, as there is no other cover. In winter, use frozen berries if you allow them to thaw and then drain off excess liquid. Pale, watery berries give a diluted sour beverage with no fruit profile. For other varieties, hull them; halve larger berries so they break down well in the shaker or blender.

Lime juice should be fresh. In a three-ingredient cocktail, bottled lime juice is just so flat and slightly chemical-tasting that it always shows up in the worst light. One lime usually produces 30 ml, which is your requirement for this recipe per glass.

You can shake or blend. In a coupe or martini glass, shaking with ice and then double straining yields a drier but stronger cocktail. If you blend this with ice, now it is a frozen drink. Use less ice while blending than you believe. Add too much ice, and the flavor gets diluted.

Variations

Frozen strawberry daiquiri: Place 1 cup of ice in the blender along with all ingredients and blend until creamy. Pour into a chilled glass. For those hot afternoons when you are looking for something a bit more slushie-like.
Strawberry daiquiri without sugar: If the strawberries are very sweet, use 20g ripe fruit instead of sugar. We recommend adding 10 ml simple syrup, but only if the drink tastes too sharp once blended!
Virgin strawberry daiquiri: Omit the rum and have 30 ml of cold water or coconut aquafaba. Same fruit and lime. And kids and non-drinkers are served the same drink but with no alcohol.
Dark rum strawberry daiquiri: Replace white rum with aged gold rum. A rounder, lightly caramel-noted cocktail. Use the same quantities.

How to Make Simple Strawberry Daiquiri Recipe (Step-by-Step)

Muddle the strawberries properly in the shaken version

A thin strawberry daiquiri generally had soggy strawberries that were crushed the slightest amount. You want the pulp, not whole berries bouncing around inside your shaker. Muddle the fruit with a muddler or back of bar spoon until · it is wet and broken up, with juice at bottom of shaker. Vanilla is the rose that opens your heart up and strawberry tastes great as syrup but, well this pulp has most of raspberry flavor. The solids are trapped on the route into your glass and yet, while delivering juice through our filter, even these have received more than a little consideration: Skip the muddling and shake whole berries only with rum (or lime) for pink-tinged, near-flavored mixer.

Shake until the shaker is painfully cold

Fifteen seconds of hard shaking is enough if you're doing it properly. The shaker should frost on the outside and feel uncomfortably cold in your hands. That level of chilling matters in a small cocktail with no mixer to hide behind. A lukewarm daiquiri tastes harsh. An ice-cold one tastes balanced. If your shaker is small, use one large ice cube or several small ones. Crushed ice melts too fast and over-dilutes the drink before you've finished shaking.

Use less ice when you blend

Frozen strawberry daiquiris are where the principle goes wrong; this is usually a smoothie recipe with lots of ice in it. for one serving: 1 cup of ice The more ice, the less water there'll be in the drink, and also every sip will have less rum, lime & strawberry. Do not blend for one minute but rather 20 to 30 seconds. If you blend for a long time, the mixture will heat up some and melt ice to watery slush. As soon as it looks smooth, pour it into your glass. If left to rest, it separates within minutes.

Taste before you commit to the glass

Strawberries are not consistent. The same shop can sell you a punnet that is sweet one week but tastes almost sour the next. Shake or stir and dip a clean spoon into it to taste. Too sharp? Add another 5ml of simple syrup. Too sweet? A squeeze of lime just about does the trick. Too strong? Never with that much rum in 60 ml, but 10 ml more lime can fix it. Change it in the shaker or blender, not after you've poured into the glass.

5 from 1 vote

Simple Strawberry Daiquiri Recipe

You get a no-fuss four-ingredient strawberry daiquiri with white rum, fresh strawberries, lime juice, and sugar. No strawberry liqueur, no boxed mix, and not a blender full of ice making it into an icy slushy unless you're doing that type of drink. The basic daiquiri is rum, lime, and sugar. Replace some of the lime with pureed strawberry, and this becomes a summer-in-a-glass cocktail without that saccharine pink faux flavor many commercial bar offerings prior to June 21st have relied upon. If possible, use ripe strawberries at room temperature. Cold fruit is straight from the fridge, which mutes flavor. If instead you're thinking of making a frozen slushie, two methods will work: shake it with ice and strain into a pre-chilled glass to achieve a clean, cold drink or blend it up shortly (don't go nuts). Both take about 5 minutes. The shaken style also allows you to include more rum and lime with each sip. The radius setting is less chilly and more snuggly. A way to get around that is with 15 ml of sugar or simple syrup; taste as you pour. Strawberries are not all sweet, and a batch of tart berries requires more sugar than a bag of ripe ones picked the same day.

Equipment

Cocktail shaker or blender
Fine mesh strainer
Measuring jigger
Citrus squeezer
Chilled coupe, martini, or hurricane glass
Bar spoon
Small knife and chopping board

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Ingredients

✓60ml (2 oz) white rum
✓30ml (1 oz) fresh lime juice (about 1 lime)
✓15ml (1 tablespoon) caster sugar or simple syrup
✓80g (about 5 medium fresh strawberries), hulled
✓Ice for shaking or blending

Instructions

Hull the strawberries and halve any large ones. Let the berries sit on the counter for 10 minutes if they are straight from the fridge. Fruit at room temperature is tastefully sweeter and blends in more easily.
To make it as a shaken daiquiri: place the strawberries in with the shaker and pound down on them to muddle using the back of a spoon until broken into a chunky purée. Pour in the rum, lime juice, and sugar or simple syrup. Top with ice, seal the shaker, and shake hard for 15 seconds or until cool to touch.
Place a fine mesh strainer over your chilled glass, and strain the cocktail through it using the back of a spoon to smash out any juice in between layers. Top half of the strawberry on rim (optional)
For a frozen daiquiri, combine the strawberries (with tops removed), rum, lime juice, and sugar in your blender with 1 or so cups of ice. Blend on high for 20 to 30 seconds until smooth and pourable! Taste quickly. If the berries are sharp, add another 5 ml of sugar. Pour it into a chilled glass and serve them immediately.
Drink it cold. This cocktail heats up in terms of lost character. If you have made the shaken version, do not leave it on the counter for something else to finish being cooked on the hob.

Frequently Asked Questions

What rum is best for a strawberry daiquiri?

A clean white rum works best. A light Cuban-style white rum, like Bacardi Superior or Havana Club 3 Year, has sourness and sweetness that are still somewhat present with the strawberry-and-lime aspect of this combination. Dark or spiced rum wrestles with the fruit. Stay away from flavored rums if you want your cocktail to taste like a fresh strawberry and not the flavor of rum.

Can I use frozen strawberries?

Yes. Before using frozen cranberries in any recipe, thaw them first and pour off liquid that collects in the bottom of a bowl. Frozen berries also give off more water when blitzed than fresh ones, which can thin the drink. Slightly less lime juice or an extra strawberry will help balance that out. For the shaken version, do not put frozen berries straight into the shaker. They won't muddle well.

Why does my strawberry daiquiri taste watery?

Most often over ice into the blender, or watery, underripe strawberries. One cup of ice max for one frozen drink. An excess of crushed ice can over-dilute your shaken drinks. Shake for 15 seconds (not 30) with a hefty block of ice. It is also generally a thinner wash of near-extract because weak fruit leads to thin flavor. You have to taste your strawberries before you begin.

Is a strawberry daiquiri strong?

Its serving contains 60 ml of rum, about one UK double. It tastes less spirit-forward than a neat pour because the lime and fruit all work together to mitigate your perception of alcohol. The frozen blended version is even more mild than the shaken one, as cold and sweetness cover up rum yet again. Pace yourself accordingly.

Notes

Simple syrup vs caster sugar

Caster sugar will dissolve as the blades spin. Crispy granulated sugar may leave flecks or gritty crystals in the glass if not all dissolved in frozen liquid, as with a shaken daiquiri. Simple syrup mixes instantly. If all you have is caster sugar and you're shaking, stir the sugar into lime juice in (presumably) your shaker first for about 20 seconds or more so it dissolves and then muddle with rum and strawberries. That one little step is to dissolve the sugar before putting in the ice.

Glass choice

The shaken one lends itself well to a chilled coupe or martini glass. We have a mini and powerful drink with a wide rim so that we can smell the strawberry as you lift it. Literally any hurricane or highball glass will work for the frozen version since you'll want enough room to account for the extra volume from that ice. Chill the glass in the freezer for 5 min or fill it with ice water while you prep, then discard before pouring.