The Strawberry Milkshake

This is another in a series of occasional brief posts on my home soda jerk exploits.

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There are several ways to concoct a strawberry milkshake. I used to mix milk, strawberry ice cream and a few fresh strawberries in a blender. But fresh fruit doesn’t go well with the old-fashioned milkshake maker I now use. One way around that would be to substitute strawberry syrup or topping for the fresh strawberries. But that issue aside, I tend to have vanilla ice cream on hand and don’t wish to stock strawberry just for the very occasional shake.

The good news is that Vanilla is the perfect base for ice cream treats in that it can be mixed with just about anything to create a desired flavor, including dessert toppings for milkshakes. In fact, that’s standard practice for making fruit or chocolate flavored shakes in many parts of the U.S.

I merely mixed a half to two-thirds of a cup – I didn’t measure – of cold whole milk with a couple very heaping teaspoons of the strawberry topping before adding several healthy scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Trust me when I tell you that Smucker’s strawberry topping is better for milkshakes than those squeeze-bottle syrups that are used to make strawberry-flavored milk.

Several minutes on mostly the lower of my shake-maker’s two power settings was all it took for a great-tasting and moderately thick shake. I could have used less milk if I was aiming for extra-thick.

As easy as it was to prepare the shake, I probably drank it in less time than it took to make. I’m not a casual sipper when I have a good milkshake in hand.