Alcoholic slushies for grown-ups (sloshies?)

On the hottest day of the year so far, I thought that it would be sensible to go to the garden centre to buy something vital like a new rake.  This was in no way, shape or form an attempt by me to avoid home schooling my daughter, who then decided that she wanted to come with me.   This was in no way, shape or form an attempt by her to avoid doing some school work.

So, both of us having bunked off school for a couple of hours felt that it was completely legitimate to reward our truancy with a treat.  I opted for my first proper barista coffee since lockdown began and she went for the worlds sweetest and most lurid slushy.  Both of us were delighted with our choices.

That night in bed I started thinking about how there really should be an adult slushy alternative involving cocktails and why hadn’t someone come up with this idea yet. It turns out it is actually already a thing in swanky bars in big cities but since there was little to no chance of going anywhere like that for the foreseeable future, I decided that I would do some experimenting.

There are lots of recipes out there that involve making a cocktail with ice and blending it to make a instant form of slushy which has to drunk immediately and there are plenty of recipes for mildly alcoholic sorbets but I was looking for something properly boozy I could make a big batch of in my ice-cream maker and keep in the freezer for whenever I fancied one.

I knew that there was an art to getting the right consistency to sorbets as balancing flavourings, water, sugar and alcohol can be very problematic.  Too much booze and your sorbet won’t freeze, sugar is needed to add a creamy texture to the sorbet but it also, like alcohol, lowers the freezing point and then you have to balance your other flavours to get the taste right.  On top of that I had to adjust those amounts to create a more ‘slushy’ texture that could be stored in the freezer without freezing hard.

A very happy afternoon and several attempts later….. ta da!!  I give you strawberry daiquiri, pina colada and elderflower G&T ‘sloshies’ – you’re welcome!

To recreate these ‘sloshies’ you will need an ice-cream maker and unless it is a self-freezing model you will also need to chill all your ingredients before you start.

Elderflower G&T

150ml gin

500ml tonic water

50ml elderflower cordial

50ml sugar syrup