Welcome to Clubhouse Eats, where we celebrate the game’s most delectable food and drink. Hope you brought your appetite.
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For as long as any member, guest, or employee can remember, Cherry Hills Country Club, just south of downtown Denver, has served up seriously delicious milkshakes. In the estimation of the club’s pastry chef, Kristen Riehl, those milkshakes can likely be traced back to one of two eras: the early 1920s, which coincides with the club’s formation and when the soda shop concept was just taking off across the United States; or during the 1950s, when the soda-shops craze was at its zenith.
Either way, Cherry Hills’ milkshakes have been delighting members and guests for the better part of a century. To uncover the secret behind their success — and to learn how you can create equally delectable milkshakes at home — we went right to the source. Some of what we learned may surprise you.
What’s not surprising is Riehl’s commitment to using premium ice cream. Like anything that you’ll whip up in the kitchen, the best dishes — or in this case, dessert beverages — are only as good as the raw ingredients used to make them. So splurge on top-shelf ice cream. In fact, Chef Riehl acknowledges that gourmet gelato also makes for an exceptional blended beverage.
But as Cherry Hills’ pastry chef acknowledges, the term milkshake is a bit of a misnomer, at least as it applies to the ice cream-based treats served at the club. After all, Riehl points out that ice cream is milk-based, and above all else you want to preserve the creaminess of the ice cream in the finished product. In other words, a little milk goes a long way.
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“When blending, we add the smallest amount of milk that we can get away with,” she says. “Milk should be used sparingly, and only enough to just loosen the ice cream.”
It’s best also to rely on whole milk for the small measure that you’re adding. Other milks — namely 2%, 1% and skim milk, especially — will only compromise the thick, creamy viscosity of the finished shake. And let’s be honest, a milkshake is an indulgence to begin with; there’s no sense trying to make it healthy.
If you’re using syrups to add flavor to your at-home shake, Riehl advocates skipping the inclusion of milk altogether. The combination of milk and other liquid-based ingredients like a flavored syrup, can produce a beverage that’s just too thin.
From there, well… the sky’s the limit in terms of what you can create. At Cherry Hills, in addition to relying on different flavored syrups, the pastry team might add candies or cookies or even cake mixes to create specific milkshakes, such as S’mores, Nutella, birthday cake, or peanut butter and jelly. Mixing vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet, for example, produces a delectable Creamsicle milkshake. Just remember that in that instance, the ice cream and the sherbet are delivering the majority of the flavor.
That’s really all you need to know. Just go light on the milk, make sure you’re using the best ice cream or gelato you can find, and — in the words of Cherry Hills’ pastry chef — “let your imagination run wild.”