Mix up a variation of the strawberry margarita

It's strawberry season.

Make that strawberry margarita season.

To help you get your swirl on, we've developed a basic frozen strawberry margarita recipe that is easy to make and refreshing as is. But it's also the perfect canvas for creating your own signature spring cocktail.

After mixing up a batch of the basic recipe, we split it into fourths. Then we culled our collection of baking extracts and found out just how easy it is to make subtle - yet delightful - changes to the basic strawberry margarita flavor.

We added mango to one batch, just because we happened to have one on hand. That changed the flavor greatly but still yielded a nice, cooling drink.

A couple of notes:

Our recipe uses frozen limeade and frozen orange juice. If you leave the cans out to soften, measuring is much easier.

These drinks are not overly sweet, nor overly strong. If you prefer more of either taste, adjust the amounts after you've finished making the basic batch.

You can use simple syrup as a sweetener. It's simple to make - equal parts water and dissolved sugar, or try Poe's Phantastic Simple Syrup, a Virginia-made product available at ABC stores for $4.95 for a 1-liter bottle.

You can also add ice to adjust the texture. We like to serve margaritas so that you can stand a spoon in them.

Finally, these margaritas are nice with or without salt. We made one version with sea salt and ground chipotle peppers, an interesting flavor combination that delivered a hit of heat to the back of the throat on the finish.

So dust off those margarita glasses, plug in the blender, fire up your imagination and get to celebrating strawberry margarita season in style.