Slow Roasted Strawberry Milkshake with Crushed Malt Balls

Since this is my first go around with BAB I wanted to introduce myself with something short, creamy, cold and sweet. As for me, I'm simply a cook with food dreams and an active imagination. And lucky for me, cooking is also my profession.

Like clockwork, as local strawberries start to trickle in, so do the slew of seasonal recipes that appear in print and in tons of blogs. Timeless dishes such as trifle, shortcakes, pie, creams and custards consume the majority of the recipes indexes. Yes, of course, they all have merit and nothing beats a perfectly ripe strawberry, but what drives my imagination as a cook is coming up with something new and innovative. This concoction came to my mind while recently looking over an image for a strawberry milkshake.

As much as I love fruit milkshakes they sometimes taste weak as the fruit gets lost in sweet dairy notes or in heaps of sugar. So, how do you make something more pronounced and less diluted? Or better put, how do you get a particular ingredient to come to the surface. In the cooking world the techniques we usually apply are centered towards reducing, roasting or dehydrating; this makes foods more complex and sharp. With vegetables and fruits roasting and dehydrating extracts the natural sugars making them more intensely sweet. My good friend Chef Roger Feely turned me on to slow roasting strawberries years ago as something spectacular to garnish desserts with. I have been consumed with them ever since! And just like that, while glancing at that image for the strawberry milkshake this shake idea was born.

I give credit to our pastry chef Juliann for the malt ball idea. She suggest malted chocolate as a complimentary garnish with good symmetry for the shake, but when the words soy lecithin and foam came into the conversation I shut down and decided to go conventional. Great flavor combo, so thanks for the suggestion Juliann!

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I'm pretty sure this is an original so I'm very happy to bring it to you fresh on BAB!

Slow Roasted Strawberry Milkshake with Crushed Malt Balls

Makes: 2-3 servings

Ingredients:

For the Strawberries:
1 pound strawberries, tops removed and halved
¼ cup sugar
1 fresh vanilla bean, seeds removed
Pinch salt

For the Shake:
1 pint, super premium ice cream (16% fat, low air)
¾ cup whole milk
¾ of the roast strawberries; save some for garnish

Garnish:
2-3 roast strawberry halves
1 tablespoon of crushed malt balls

Preparation:

1. Turn on oven to 250 degrees, Fahrenheit
2. Scrape out the seeds from the vanilla bean
3. Break up the clump of vanilla seeds with finger tips.
4. Toss the berries with sugar, salt and vanilla bean.
5. Slow cook in oven for 2 hours, uncovered, pull and let cool
6. Crush 6 malt balls with a mallet or heavy pan
7. Place ice cream in blender with milk, strawberries and some reserved syrup. Blend until just mixed. Thin it out with milk if too thick.
8. Pour into glasses and garnish with reserved strawberries, syrup and crushed malt balls

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Slow Roasted Strawberry Milkshake with Crushed Malt Balls