Baked Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Stout Milkshake

Sometimes you just need to bring the boys to the yard. You know, for milkshakes and all. Although BAKED specializes in baked goods (obviously), their first cookbook from ten years ago, BAKED: New Frontiers in Baking, contains a chapter on drinks, and I usually skip these when we have them on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule because I don’t write about beverages on this blog. However, I will pretty much always make an exception for milkshakes. I mean, we’ve got ice cream, sometimes cupcakes, sometimes malt, and as is the case this week, booze. This Chocolate Stout Milkshake features one of my favorite chocolate-based flavor combinations: chocolate and stout beer. I don’t actually drink stout, but chocolate and stout play off each other so brilliantly that I’ll never pass up a chance to bring them together. I also appreciated this quick and easy recipe this week because my kitchen is still not fully set up for more complex baking projects with the stand mixer. (But OMG, I’m so close!)

This is maybe the easiest “dessert” I’ve ever made, in fact. You simply throw good chocolate ice cream, chocolate stout beer, milk, and malted milk powder into a blender and give it a good whirl. My ice cream and stout choices were Straus Dutch Chocolate and Samuel Smith Organic Chocolate Stout, respectively– it was a beauuuutiful flavor marriage. The ice cream has a deep, rich chocolaty flavor without actually being “dark” chocolate, and the Sam Smith is a smooth stout compared to something like Guinness, which I find very bitter. (The recipe calls for a chocolate stout and specifically says not to use Guinness.) A few minutes before you whip up this tasty concoction, make sure to throw a couple of glasses in the freezer.

I ended up using one large glass, which fit the entire recipe… including the whopping 800 calories from the entire pint of ice cream that I used! It was hard to restrain myself from downing all of it in one fell swoop, but fortunately the glass has a lid, so I only drank half and saved the rest. Though for the record, I could have easily housed the whole thing. 😉 This is the best milkshake that I’ve had in recent memory– perfect, really. It’s light as far as milkshakes go, and the chocolate-stout combination is greater than the sum of its parts. I’m not usually a big fan of chocolate combo flavors because I don’t want anything eclipsing my chocolate, but in the case of stout, I think both ingredients bring out the best in each other, so I am 100% in favor! (Have I beaten the chocolate-stout horse to death yet??) And of course you can easily play with the ratio of ice cream-to-stout to your liking. I honestly didn’t even measure anything– just eyeballed the liquids while pouring into the blender.

Do yourself a favor and make up a quick batch of this shake mix– it’s essential on a hot summer day. You can find the recipe for Chocolate Stout Milkshake at Baked Sunday Mornings. And feel free to throw a cute straw in that frosty glass if you wanna make it a little more festive. 🙂

P.S. The leftover milkshake was more like boozy chocolate milk, but probably the tastiest chocolate milk I’ve ever had!