Chocolate Freakshake Recipe: Thick, Loaded, And Easy To Make At Home
Written by Yash Lakhan | March 29, 2024
Freakshakes exploded onto the café scene in Canberra and then took off as a worldwide dessert trend with huge presentations and heavily layered toppings. A freakshake is not your average milkshake. It’s more of a dessert in drink form, made by blending ice cream and then decorating the rim with cookies, brownies, syrup, and whipped cream. The visual appeal took center stage in the trend, especially in café culture and social media food photography.
As the freakshake trend branched out, variations emerged to cater to different tastes and dietary preferences. Some featured classic flavors like chocolate, caramel, and vanilla, while others embraced unconventional combinations such as matcha green tea, cereal, and even savory elements entailing bacon and cheese. The freakshake has been adopted and adapted to localized, regional palates in various corners of the world. Newer health-conscious alternatives have sprung up, including vegan and gluten-free options. There are even seasonal variations springing up, tailored to suit festive occasions. Some include baked goodies, and others include generous alcoholic additions.
This chocolate freakshake recipe will show you how to make a classic chocolate version with crunchy toppings and a thick milkshake base.
Milkshake vs Freakshake: The Real Difference
A regular milkshake is typically a mixture of milk, ice cream, and a variety of flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, or fruit syrup blended until smooth enough to drink. Milkshakes were popularized by diners and soda fountains during the early half of the 20th century and are commonly thought of as quick-service dessert or café styles of beverage. Traditional milkshakes emphasize a balance between flavor, texture, and ease of consumption, with only whipped cream or maybe a little drizzle of syrup on top.
Freakshakes build on that foundation and take it into dessert territory. Around the mid-2010s, cafés in Australia began creating oversized shakes with elaborate embellishments, and this created a huge amount of publicity and popularity for freakshakes throughout social media. While traditional milkshakes would normally have simple ceramic cups/dishes, many of the best freakshakes are made in decorative glassware with elaborate embellishments like candy-dipped rimmed glasses, extremely thick-blended base, towers of whipped cream, brownies, waffles, donuts, cookies, and excessive amounts of chocolate drizzle. The result is that freakshakes contain much more than just liquid due to all of these additional embellishments.
The other major difference between regular milkshakes and freakshakes is the way each beverage is made to look visually appealing. Regular milkshakes are typically simple in appearance and designed for utilitarian purposes, while freakshakes are typically elaborate in design and construction and are intended to provide a perceived higher level of presentation than regular milkshakes. It causes many freakshakes to look more like plated desserts than beverages. This over-the-top type of presentation helped make the chocolate freakshake one of the hottest café trends and social media trends.
Chocolate Freakshake Recipe
For the Rims
- 6–8 Crushed Toffee Crunch Oreos (or any Oreo variety)
- ½ cup crushed Biscoff cookies
- ¼ cup Heath toffee bits
- ½ cup melted chocolate chips for coating the rims
For the Shake Base
- 4 cups vanilla ice cream
- 1½ cups chocolate milk
- ¼ cup chocolate syrup
How to Assemble Your Chocolate Freakshakes (Step-by-Step)
Step One (Get everything ready)
Crush your cookies, chop up any brownies or candy, and lay it all out in bowls. You want your toppings ready to go before anything melts.
Step Two (Melt the chocolate)
Take a microwave-safe bowl and add your chocolate chips to it. Heat it in the microwave at short intervals of about 30 seconds. After you heat it, mix it until it becomes smooth and creamy.
Step Three (Decorate the rims)
Dip the rims of your serving mugs in melted chocolate, then roll them around in Oreo crumbs, Biscoff crumbs, or bits of toffee pieces. Put in the refrigerator for a short amount of time to allow the coating to set before adding the shake.
Step Four (Blend the shake)
Using a blender, combine the vanilla ice cream, chocolate milk, and chocolate syrup until smooth. The result should be a liquid with a consistency so that it can easily pour into the mugs, yet thick enough to help hold the topping on top of the shake.
Step Five (Pour and pile on the toppings)
Pour your finished milkshake into the prepped mugs, then top with whipped cream, whether you choose to or not. Top your whipped cream with your desired toppings (cookies, brownies, waffles, candy). You can use skewers or toothpicks to help keep your toppings stable.
Step Six (Serve immediately)
Once assembled, freakshakes will quickly soften due to the rich creaminess of the whipped cream and warmness of the added toppings.