| If you’ve ever been to a large trade show, home show, or – in our case this weekend, a Food and Wine show… chances are, you’ve seen a booth hawking wine slushie mixes. “Frappe Vino”, “Wine Slush”, “Party Slush Mix”, “Vino Slush”… there are a bunch of companies offering it. The samples are so good, it’s easy to drop the $12 or so for the 12 oz baggie of powdered mix. Trust me, we’ve done so… twice. That second time, I took a look at the ingredients and almost had a heart attack. I couldn’t believe what I’d just paid so MUCH for!
I was reminded of that this weekend, as the D’Marie company was once again set up with their wonderful wine slush. While we all loved the slush, I decided that I would set about to “reverse engineer” it. Cue jokes about “Dis Marie” bastardizing “Dat Marie’s” recipe… Anyway… between the ingredient listing, listed weight, nutritional info, and the unused second bag sitting in our liquor cabinet… I didn’t figure it would be hard to do. It wasn’t. |
 |
The ingredients are simple, and the technique is one of those “so simple, it shouldn’t be considered an actual recipe” deals. You, too, can make homemade wine slush mix at home! While matcha powder isn’t cheap, this recipe doesn’t take much at all – your wine slush mix should cost less than $1.50/batch!
Oh, and remember the citric acid you bought for my Quick mozzarella recipe? Well if you haven’t bought some, what are you waiting for? Cheese and wine slushes aren’t the only cool things you can do with it – more citric acid recipes are coming!
Oh, and that Czar of cakes competition? I won! Click here for photos of my cake entry.
Basic Homemade Wine Slush Mix Recipe
1 2/3 – 1 3/4 cups sugar (Less for if using a sweeter wine, more for a dry wine)
1 1/2 tsp citric acid
1/4 tsp matcha (green tea) powder *optional
Measure all ingredients into a food processor. Run the food processor for a minute or two, to finely process the sugar and evenly distribute the ingredients.
Pour powdered mix into a baggie or airtight container until ready to use.
To make wine slush: Pour 1 batch of mix into a 1 gallon freezer bag (or large bowl). Add 1 750 ml bottle of wine, and 3 cups of water. Stir/shake well. Freeze for about 3 hours before serving in glasses of your choice.
(I like to freeze the mixture for a bit longer, stirring/shaking every 30 minutes or so, to produce a finer grained sorbet style dessert, pictured.)
As a Gift Idea: Package 1 batch of mix into a clear craft/goodie baggie, push most of the air out, and tie with a twist tie. Add a ribbon bow. Print the above directions (“To make wine slush”) onto a pretty card and attach to the baggie or ribbon.
Want a fancier baggie, to double as gift itself? Check out Dragon Chow Dice Bags – they’re big enough to hold a batch!
Variations:
”Sangria Slush” mix: Measure sugar and citric acid into food processor (skip the matcha powder). Zest one orange, one lemon, and one lime on top of the measured ingredients before processing.
Flavored Wine Slush Mixes: Measure sugar and citric acid into food processor (skip the matcha powder). Add flavoring of your choice: About 1 tsp of flavor extract, or ½ tsp of a flavor oil will do it, but feel free to flavor to your taste. Process as directed above. Spread mixture out on a cookie sheet and allow to dry for about an hour. Run dried mixture through the food processor to break up any dried clumps you may have, then store per main recipe.
When it comes to extracts or flavor oils, you can have fun with it, but you will want to label the flavor if giving it as a gift. Also, consider the wine to be used. Generally speaking, white wines will work better with flavored mixes than red will.
As an example, banana extract would make a fun slush, but would definitely be better with a white wine. Also, peach flavor oil, combined with a champagne would be very tasty – like a frozen peach bellini!
 |
Interested in boozy culinary experiments? You’ll LOVE my first cookbook, The Spirited Baker! Combining liqueurs with more traditional baking ingredients can yield spectacular results.Try Mango Mojito Upside Down Cake, Candy Apple Flan, Jalapeno Beer Peanut Brittle, Lynchburg Lemonade Cupcakes, Pina Colada Rum Cake, Strawberry Daiquiri Chiffon Pie, and so much more. To further add to your creative possibilities, the first chapter teaches how to infuse spirits to make both basic and cream liqueurs, as well as home made flavor extracts! This book contains over 160 easy to make recipes, with variation suggestions to help create hundreds more! Order your hard copy here, or digital edition here. |
Sorry, but your recipe is definitely off by quite a bit. You should not have to stir the mixture either as it freezes and using a freezer bag…..well…..I guess if you’re looking for a mess to happen in your freezer. Your picture definitely does NOT look like a slushie drink either! Better head back to the drawing board!
Actually, we made our own recipe side by side with an original, purchased wine slush mix, and it was exactly the same, start to finish. (Aside from color, as we did not add beet extract to make the powder red).
The mixes tasted the same dry, behaved the same in the freezer, and had the same taste/texture when frozen.
So, if it’s not the product you’re looking for, you may want to skip the source material as well. I wasn’t looking to reinvent the wheel, just faithfully duplicate it
OMG, I can’t wait to make this!! I have purchased Vino Slush many times, and each time I think seriously, must duplicate soon! Looks perfect to me, I think Steve up there may be upset that his formula is out!
Where do you find the green tea powder and citric acid?
We bought matcha powder at an Asian grocery store, and citric acid from a homebrew supplies shop.
We actually go through a fair amount of citric acid, between wine slush and the quick mozzarella (elsewhere on this site!)… so I’d definitely recommend getting some!
I have to admit, when I bought several of those mixes, I said, “I am probably paying $20 a pound for sugar!” Fool me once…I will definitely be trying this recipe. Thanks much!
THANKS MARIE, WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST SLUSH MIX THIS WEEKEND , LOVED IT BUT GASPED AT THE COST. I KNEW THERE WAS AN EASY RECIPE SOME WHERE. I CAME ACROSSED ONE USING A POWERED LEMONADE AND A POWERED TEA MIX WHICH I THOUGHT MIGHT WORK , SEEMS TO HAVE BOTH THE INGREDIENTS YOU STATE, THE MATCHA (GREEN TEA) AND THE CITRIC ACID (LEMONADE) AND LOTS OF SUGAR IN BOTH… I FOUND BOTH ITEMS ON EBAY. THE MATCHA WAS DIRECT FROM CHINA. I THINK I’E SEEN THE CITRIC ACID IN MY GROCERY STORE AS IT IS USED EXTENSIVELY IN HOME CANNING ESPECIALLY TOMATOES. P.S. DON’T UNDERSTAND “STEVE” DID HE NEVER GO INTO A 7 11 AND SEE A SLUSHEE MACHINE WORKING??? THERE IS A PADDLE OF SORTS CONTINUNALLY MIXING AS THE PRODUCT FREEZES!!!! COULDN’T HAVE SHOWN A BETTER PICTURE OF A SLUSHIE. HE MUST BE TALKING ABOUT SUSHI….
Hello Bob, how big of a batch did you make using the powered lemonade and powered tea?
Where these the only ingredients you used? Thanks
Instead of 1 cup of water, and in place of the citric acid, I used a cup of cranberry juice (unsweethened), and added a few shots of POM liquerto the recipe before freezing.
I also tried a few shots of cranberry moonshine instead of POM, but can only buy that in North Carolina liquor stores. DELICIOUS!
Love this recipe! I’m curious to know what each ingredient does. What does the citric acid do? What about the green tea powder? The sugar?
Citric acid balances the sugar, which is there to sweeten it. The green tea just adds flavor.
Makes sense … thanks!
how about making this with a sugarfree substitute? Could you use splenda or something? I just bought some and am looking forward to trying both… the boxed and your recipe
Thanks for sharing
You know, I honestly have no idea. I *THINK* it would work… I’d suggest giving it a try and seeing how you like it!
Use crystal light packets.
If anyone tries this recipe with splenda or other SF sweeteners, I would love to know. A cousin told me she found a SF mix and I was actually looking for a place to purchase one when I stumbled onto this recipe. If nothing else, I’m wondering if you couldn’t even just halve the sugar and replace it with splenda. I’d love suggestions…
I just purchased some slushie mix from Shipshewana and my husband I are both hooked. We are not wine drinkers either. I understand what Steve was getting at. The gal in Shipsie had a slushie machine there. The texture we had using their mix was different than what they were handing out. Steve, if you’re looking for the same texture, you could probably put the frozen slush mixture in a blender. I can’t wait to try this recipe!
I purchased green tea leaves from a local asian grocery store and pulverized them in my Bullet mixer to a powder state. (no one locally had the matcha) Then I pulverized the sugar too. Added back in the green tea powder for one final pulse along with my citric acid. For citric acid, I substitued the Ball brand citric acid mix found in the canning section of the grocery store. So 1 tsp pulverized green tea, 2 tsp Ball citric mix, 1 3/4 c of sugar which was then pulverized, 3 c water, and one bottle red wine (Sutter Home Sweet Red). I chilled the mix in a gallon size bag in the freezer, but got impatient. Put 1/2 the mix into my Cusineart Frozen Yogurt maker and within 5 minutes I had perfect wine slushies. Topped it off with sugar/chilli coated Gooseberries I found at the asian market. Turned out perfect.
I love you people, it may be the wine slushy talking though! Worked perfect and tasted just like the mix I bought at trade show!!!
Marie,
Have you tried this with Kool-Aid? Want to try the Mango-Peach flavor. Hmmmm.
I haven’t, but I don’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work!
where do you buy the matcha powder and the citric acid? cant wait to try this.
I get matcha powder at a local Asian grocery store, and citric acid at a homebrewing supply store!