#MilkshakeWeek: Strawberry-Rhubarb Milkshake

Necessity is the mother of invention. But usually only the great inventions go back to give necessity credit.

This Strawberry-Rhubarb Milkshake is one of those great inventions – the result of that necessity-born brain wracking that happens when you open the fridge and don't have the ingredient you need.

Milkshakes around here usually are no more than milk, ice cream, and jam. And, fairly often, frozen fruit, because I'm always trying to sneak extra nutrients into all of us.

I went to make Glen a blueberry milkshake a couple nights ago and opened the fridge to find no jam. Now, I could have gone down to the basement, where we have 12 more jars of the fantastic freezer jam that our neighbor trades us for farm fresh eggs. (We definitely get the better end of that deal!) Instead, I saw the container of strawberry-rhubarb sauce that I had left over from making these hand pies.

So, I added a couple spoonfuls of sauce to the blender cup, gave it a whir, and sampled the results. Oh. My. Goodness.

I brought the milkshake out to Glen and raced back to the house to test my invention again. This time, I added just milk, ice cream, and the rest of the strawberry-rhubarb sauce. The resulting milkshake was heavenly. It was the taste of Minnesota summer, in a milkshake. And it was creamy and frothy, just like a shake from a malt shoppe.

I tested the recipe on the kids, too. All three LOVED it. Hands down, one of my best necessity-born food inventions ever.


About the sauce...

This strawberry-rhubarb sauce is like nothing I've ever tasted. I fell head-over-heels in love with it when I first made it at the Land O'Lakes Test Kitchen last month. Besides the strawberry and rhubarb (obviously), the sauce is enhanced with lemon zest and vanilla extract. I'm not sure what the magic is, but this sauce has an almost buttery richness to it. If you can call a fruit sauce rich.

I'm usually never afraid to make flavoring substitutions in a recipe – like bottled lemon juice for freshly squeezed, or lemon extract for lemon zest – if it makes my life a little easier. But since the lemon zest is part of the magic that makes this sauce, I only make it with lemon zest. It's well worth the bit of extra effort. (If you try making it with lemon extract, please let me know.)

This recipe is easy to double or octuple, which is what I did with all of this rhubarb.

The only caveat with this sauce is that you should really let it cool a little (or completely) before using it to make milkshakes.

If you have extra sauce, it makes a delightful topping for angel food cake. Or, use it as a filling for hand pies. Or, just eat it by the spoonful.

You can also add frozen fruit to this milkshake recipe, with excellent results. I used a half-cup of blueberries in Glen's milkshake with a little less ice cream. I think frozen strawberries would be wonderful, too. But probably not frozen rhubarb.

(Quick story about rhubarb: When I was cutting the rhubarb, Dan came over and asked for a taste. "Just put a piece in my mouth, Mom; I don't want to wash my hands." So I plopped a chunk of fresh rhubarb into his open mouth and stifled my giggles while I waited for him to start chewing. His face contorted and he ran for the garbage can. It was priceless.)

Strawberry-Rhubarb Milkshake

Ingredients

For the sauce

1 1/4 cups strawberries, sliced
1 1/4 cups rhubarb, cut into half inch pieces
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons corn starch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
One lemon, to be zested (about 1 tsp lemon zest)

For the milkshake

3/4 cup vanilla ice cream
1 cup milk
1/4 cup strawberry-rhubarb sauce

Directions

To make the sauce

Stir the fruit, sugar, corn starch and salt together in a saucepan. Stirring frequently, cook over medium-low heat. Once fruit has started to soften, mash with potato masher or between spoon and side of pan. Continue cooking until mixture is thick and bubbly. Remove saucepan from heat and stir in vanilla. Zest lemon right over saucepan and stir zest into sauce. Cover and refrigerate until cool. Makes about 1 1/2 cups sauce.

To make the milkshake

Combine ice cream, milk and sauce in blender. Blend until well combined. Makes 1 large or 2 small milkshakes.

The sauce recipe is tweaked just a little from the Land O'Lakes Test Kitchen recipe.

My blogging friend, Julie from The Little Kitchen, decided she wanted to devote an entire week to sharing milkshake recipes. Julie and her friend, Lindsay from Love & Olive Oil, decided it would be fun to invite a bunch of other bloggers to share their milkshake recipes. And, thus, #MilkshakeWeek was born.

In addition to some cool giveaways (which can be found here and here), #MilkshakeWeek is also calling attention to The Great American Milk Drive. The Great American Milk Drive is a national campaign to encourage donations of milk to food shelves, so that hungry families can have milk. Did you know that milk is one of the most requested products at food shelves, but it is rarely donated? Your monetary donation will be used by Feeding America to purchase and distribute fluid milk to food shelves in your area. You can also make a donation by texting “MILK” to 27722. As a dairy farmer, I think this campaign is sweeter than any milkshake.

Here are some more fabulous #MilkshakeWeek recipes:

• Fried Banana Milkshakes from The Little Kitchen
• Cherry Lambic Milkshakes from Love & Olive Oil
• Heavenly Apple Pie Milkshake from fifteen spatulas
• Toasted Marshmallow Milkshake from Cookies and Cups
• Grasshopper Pie Milkshake for Adults from Boulder Locavore
• Cookies & Cream Coffee Milkshake from Bake Your Day
• S'mores Milkshakes from Katie's Cucina
• Healthy Banana Cream Pie Milkshake from Texanerin Baking
• Toasted Marshmallow Shake from kokocooks
• Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Oreo Milkshake from My Baking Addiction
• Chocolate Coffee Milkshake from Jelly Toast
• Chocolate Coffee Milkshake from Crunchy Creamy Sweet
• S'Mores Milkshake {Toasted Marshmallow & Chocolate Milkshake} from Foodie with Family

And here are my other #MilkshakeWeek recipes:

Turtle Pecan Milkshake
Dark Chocolate Raspberry Milkshake

(Each post has links to a dozen or so of my fellow bloggers' #MilkshakeWeek recipes, too.)