Words Mel Ansell, illustration Saskia Rushton-Green
OMG! If you haven’t heard of freakshakes before, come out from beneath your rock and smell the social media, darling! These are the most delectable sweet treats and they have the bonus of being ever-so-instagramable. A freak shake is just a massive milkshake with a bunch of more evolved sugary snacks crawling out of its saccharine primeval sludge. So, if your sweet-tooth is itching, let’s get in the kitchen and make one of these beasts!
Firstly, what you’ll need to do is whip up a nice ganache. To do this, I like to take the darkest chocolate available and mix this with hot cream. Mmm-mm, cow juice. You want to mix the two together until it forms a glistening, shiny paste. This concoction will need to be goopy enough to go around the top of a mason jar, so I put it in the freezer in a plastic bag to cool to the right thickness.
Next you’ll need to make the actual milkshake liquid. Of course, you’ll need milk (mmm-mm). To get that creamy, foam moustache on your-upper-lip kind of taste, I suggest wholesome high-fat milk. Lewis Road, those restricted supply perverts, do a good one, if you are willing to hand over an arm and a leg. You are also going to need to decide on a base flavour for your shake; popular ones include strawberry, chocolate and gingerbread. For my shake, I’m going to truly make it a freak and blend all these flavours into one mega-flavour! Go big or go home in a handbasket, I say. So, I’m placing my creamy milk (mmm-mm) into a blender with a punnet of strawberries, the darkest chocolate known to man, lard, several gingerbread men, a leftover hot-cross bun, and a couple of fingers from my frenemies. Then blend on high until you get a nice even pink colour!
Next, spread the ganache around the rim of the mason jar, and lightly use a brulee torch to create a glossy effect. Next we colour the jar. You can just spread a little jam on the inside, but I like to take a raw steak and squeeze the juice on the walls of the jar. This will give you a nicer true-red effect, and add anti-oxidants. Then you want to pour in the milkshake, picking out any lumps and whispering a curse upon the sexual prowess of your foes as you go. Whip some cream (mmm-mm) until it begs for mercy. Place this into a large piping bag with a star shaped nozzle. If you have some willing friends or minions around, ask them to hold up the sides of the bag while you fill it. Then you want to build a structural support around your jar of diagonal beams of gingerbread dipped in a chocolate so dark that it sucks the light out of people's lives. Carefully pipe all of the cream onto the mason jar, artfully obscuring it and letting the cream come to rest on the supports.
Now for the fun part, decorating. Get creative, it’s supposed to look crazy! Get a small shipment of sprinkles for the top. Chuck on a few pavlovas! A couple of blocks of cheese, why not? A few cartons of smuggled B & H’s—toast them lightly with a blowtorch. An entire doughnut shop—now we’re talking. The eyeballs of anyone who has ever smited you. Drizzle on some fossil fuels. Stick the dairy industry into the cream (mmm-mm), along with some pretzels. Add a dollop of the current political climate—horrific! Throw on the bodies of anyone who dares even whisper ‘excessive’. Erect a circus tent over the whole thing and start charging people to see your exquisitely monstrous freakshake.
Delicious!