Sonic Banana Milkshake

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Fresh banana adds fruit and water to a milkshake. Frozen banana adds fruit and cold solid, which is structurally the same thing ice cream is doing.

That difference decides whether you get a thick shake or a banana-flavoured drink with foam on top.

Freeze the banana, and cut the milk right back.

The milk quantity people use is roughly double

A standard smoothie ratio is a lot of liquid. A milkshake is not a smoothie — it should be thick enough that the straw stands up for a second before it leans.

60 ml of milk to 500 ml of ice cream is the right neighbourhood. That looks wrong when you pour it in. Add more only if the blender genuinely cannot move.

The instinct when a blender struggles is to add liquid. Resist it once; push the mixture down with a spatula with the motor off, and it usually catches.

Very ripe bananas, then frozen

Bananas get sweeter as they ripen because starch converts to sugar. A yellow banana with brown speckles has noticeably more banana flavour than a firm one, and in a shake that difference is the whole thing.

Peel before freezing. A frozen banana in its skin is genuinely difficult to deal with, and slicing it first means the blender does not have to fight a solid baton.

Blend short

Blender blades add heat. A shake blended for ninety seconds is measurably warmer and thinner than the same ingredients blended for twenty.

Twenty to thirty seconds, and stop while there are still a few flecks of banana visible.

What you need

• 2 very ripe bananas, peeled, sliced and frozen
• 500 ml vanilla ice cream
• 60 ml whole milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• a pinch of salt
• whipped cream and a cherry, to serve

Method

1. Freeze the sliced banana at least 2 hours, or overnight.
2. Soften the ice cream for 5 minutes on the counter. Rock-hard ice cream makes the blender work long enough to warm everything up.
3. Milk into the blender first, then the ice cream, then the frozen banana.
4. Add the vanilla and salt.
5. Blend 20–30 seconds only.
6. Pour, top with whipped cream and a cherry.

Liquid in the blender first

Liquid at the bottom lets the blades get moving before they meet anything solid. Solids first and the blades spin in a pocket of air under a compacted mass, which is the usual reason a blender seems to be running but nothing is happening.

The pinch of salt

Salt suppresses bitterness and sharpens the perception of sweetness, so a milkshake with a pinch of salt tastes more of banana and more of vanilla without being sweeter.

It is a quarter teaspoon at most, and it is one of the more noticeable improvements you can make to any sweet dairy drink.

Storing

None. A milkshake separates within about ten minutes and refreezing gives you a solid block.

Sliced frozen bananas keep three months, so keeping a bag of them means this is a five-minute job whenever you want it.