Recipe: Make mint-green Shamrock Shakes at home!

Shamrock Shakes are, without a doubt, one of the best things about March. Every year, McDonald’s brings out these green-coloured mint-flavoured tubs of magic, and then there’s another year’s long wait until they come around.

Well, no longer. Ever since the fast food giant started offering the mint milkshake in every one of their US restaurants in 2008 – and after McDonald’s spokesperson told CNN it was ‘basically a vanilla shake with mint flavour’, copycats all over the world have tried their hand at making it.

We’ve scoured the infinite land of online recipes for all the variations, and after experimentation, can whole-heartedly endorse the following version of the standard mix proposed by people like Brown Eyed Baker and Recipe Lion.

Shamrock Shake at Home

Ingredients:

We doubled this recipe to make about 5-6 glasses. In the amounts below, it makes a pint and a half - which is two very large shakes!

• 1 pint / 500ml vanilla ice cream
  
• 1 cup / 250ml whole milk
  
• ½ teaspoon peppermint extract / few drops mint oil
  
• Green food colouring (a few drops)
  
• Optional: whipped cream and a cherry to top.

Look simple? It is.

Method:

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender. If you’ve allowed the ice cream to soften a little, it’ll be a lot easier to mix it up all up.
   
2. Blend.
   
3. Pour into glasses.
   
4. Want to out-do McDonalds? We hear that they serve these shakes with whipped cream and a cherry in the US – not something we get from our fast food restaurants over here. So go mad.

That’s it. Now, we get to enjoy the greatest thing about St Patrick’s Day since the man himself, all year long. God bless you, internet cooking people.

Not fancy enough? Check out Serious Eats recipe, which will have you splitting your own vanilla pods. Not boozy enough? You’re looking for Tasty Kitchen’s Jameson-fuelled Shamrock Blizzard, so.