Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Shake

I know the temperatures have dropped for most of us, but even when it’s cold out I still can’t resist a good shake.  When I was little my mom would sometimes make me killer chocolate shakes, and they were one of my favorites things in the whole world.

Of course, you can make a non-dairy milkshake exactly as you would a regular shake.  All you need to do is just substitute a non-dairy ice cream for the regular dairy version, and use your favorite soy, almond or rice milk (or hemp, or oat, or hazelnut?) instead of dairy milk.  It?s really easy and just as tasty.

While I can’t knock the classic, I also can’t drink them as much as I’d like to for fear of my butt turning into a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream!  Fortunately I’ve found a great solution by using frozen fruit as the base for shakes.

Using fruit couldn?t be simpler, and it?s actually good for you!  The shake pictured above is  just frozen strawberries, vanilla soy milk and chocolate chips, all blended together.  You can play with the ratios to get the consistency you like, adding more frozen fruit for a thicker shake or more liquid to thin it out.  If you buy fruit in season and freeze it, it shouldn?t need added sweetener, but you can always add some agave nectar or dates to help sweeten it up if you?re using a tart fruit, like raspberries.

The sky?s the limit with flavors of frozen fruit shakes.  Some of my favorite combos are strawberries with chocolate almond or soy milk, and bananas with vanilla soy milk and cinnamon.  Before freezing your bananas, let them get really, really ripe (brown spots and all!), then cut them up into chunks and throw them into a freezer bag.  Once they?re frozen they become sweet, creamy ice cubes and are a great base for shakes.

I have some ideas for fall-flavored shakes I’d like to make that take advantage of all the yummy seasonal flavors of soy milk out right now.  Pumpkin Spice Silk blended with bananas sounds pretty good to me!  What are some of your favorite shake flavors and combos?