All you need is a couple tasty ingredients and a blender to make your own slushie at home!

If you’ve always loved running to the corner store in the heat of summer to grab a neon-coloured, shockingly sweet, frosty and refreshing slushie, then you have got to try your hand at making your own slushie at home!

No need for a slushie machine – you can use a blender! The only requirement is that the blender must be able to crush ice.

The great thing about homemade slushies is that you can customize them to your taste and actually make them a lot healthier!

Here, we will go over the standard soda slushie that you can make at home with a blender, but we’ll also go over two heathier and potentially tastier ingredients you can use to make a delicious and healthier slushie with a blender!

Read on to find out how to make a slushie with soda, juice, or fruit!

How to Make a Slushie in a Blender

Step 1: Gather ingredients

To make a slushie, you need three main things:

• something cold
• something sweet
• something flavourful

Depending on your preferred flavours and level of sweetness, there are several different options for the ingredients you can use to meet these three main criteria.

The coldness usually comes from ice. Ice is what creates that frosty and slushy consistency/texture. Frozen fruit is another optional ingredient that helps make the slushie frosty, cold, and flavourful.

The sweetness will come either from soda, juice, fruit, or added sugar.

The flavour will come from juice, fruit, or added flavouring (ex: drink mix powder).

…And if your slushie is lacking that nostalgic, unnatural, vibrant colouring that slushies typically come with (seriously, how do they get those colours?!), just add in a couple drops of food colouring!

See below (How to Make a Slushie With Soda, How to Make a Slushie With Juice, and How to Make a Slushie With Fruit sections) for the ingredients you need for three different ways to make a slushie with a blender – either using soda, juice, or fruit.

Step 2: Blend slushie ingredients in blender

To make a slushie with a blender at home, you need to have a blender that is powerful enough to crush ice.

Important note: To help your blender along, don’t add the ice all at once; start with 2 cups, let the blender get going, then add 1 or 2 more cups, depending on how the slushie is looking.

To blend the slushie, simply add your ingredients to your blender, slowly increase the speed to high, and blend on high for about 30-60 seconds.

Exactly how long you need to blend it will depend on the power of your blender. Just blend until the desired consistency and texture is achieved – you want it frosty but without any large chunks of ice remaining.

Step 3: Serve right away and enjoy!

A slushie is meant to be frosty and cold, so it’s best enjoyed right after blending!

How to Make a Slushie With Soda

The most popular way to make a slushie is with soda.

Typically, slushies are made with club soda along with added flavouring and sugar.

Important note: save some of the club soda to add in at the end, after the other ingredients are already fully blended, in order to avoid losing the carbonation.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup club soda
• 1 cup cold water
• 1/4 cup drink-mix power (ex: kool-aid powder)
• 1/4 cup sugar (or other sweetener)
• 3-4 cups of ice (small cubes)
• Optional: couple drops of food colouring

Instead of club soda, you can also use any of your favourite pop – gatorade, root beer, sprite, coke, etc. In this case, you do not need the extra sugar or flavouring, since pop already has plenty of both.

Again, if you want your slushie to have a bit of carbonation, save some of the pop to mix in at the very end.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup pop (gatorade, root beer, sprite, coke, etc.)
• 1 cup cold water
• 3-4 cups of ice (small cubes)
• Optional: couple drops of food colouring

A slushie can also be made without soda or pop – here’s how:

How to Make a Slushie With Juice

Juice is a great slushie base because it’s already both sweet and flavourful. Using juice instead of soda or pop is an easy way to make a slushie a lot healthier. (But you can also add in some soda/pop and extra sugar/sweetener if you want it more like the slushie you’d get from the corner store!)

A juice-based slushie also pairs great with fruit (see more below) – you can make all sorts of fruity flavour combos!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup juice
• 3-4 cups of ice (small cubes)
• Optional: 1/2 cup frozen fruit
• Optional: couple drops of food colouring

How to Make a Slushie With Fruit

Finally, the healthiest (and arguably, yummiest) slushie can be made using fruits – preferably frozen fruits.

A slushie made with fruits is a lot like a smoothie. To keep that slushie-ness and avoid ending up with just a smoothie, we want to make sure the slushie remains frosty and not too creamy or thick with fruit.

For the frostiness, use frozen fruits (either pre-frozen fruit, or freeze your fruit ahead of time), as well as ice. The ice is important because it helps dilute any thickness while adding to the slushy texture. You could also use fresh fruit and plenty of ice, if you don’t have frozen fruit on hand.

Again, feel free to also add in some soda/pop or extra sugar if you want it less smoothie-like and more slushie-like!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup frozen fruit
• 1 cup cold water, fruit juice, or club soda
• 3-4 cups of ice (small cubes)
• Optional: couple drops of food colouring

Conclusion

You don’t need a slushie machine to make a delicious and refreshing (and much healthier!) slushie right at home – all you need is a blender!

Depending on what flavours you want, and how healthy you want your slushie to be, you can make your slushie with soda, pop, juice, and/or fruit.

If you’ve got a powerful blender at home, go ahead and give making your own slushie a try!

Let me know in the comments below if you’ve ever made a slushie in a blender, and what ingredients and flavours you like the best!