Berry Silly Milkshakes

I love fresh-picked berries during the summer. And when it isn't summer, I love frozen berries. I literally pour them from a container in the freezer into a bowl and snack on them. Delicious! It brings me right back to my childhood when my mom would give us frozen blueberries as a snack. My grandparents, who lived in the Seattle area, grew blueberries. They also picked the wild blackberries that grew near their house. Grandma would fill dozens of Cool-Whip containers with berries, freeze them, and bring them to us when they visited. (Oddly, I don't remember my grandma ever serving Cool-Whip, yet she had empty dozens of the containers that she reused year after year to hold her copious berry harvest.)

While I associate both blueberries and blackberries with Washington, it is the apple that is Washington's state fruit. This got me wondering - what states have a berry as their state fruit? There are a lot! I learned that the blackberry is the state fruit of Alabama and Kentucky. Idaho, the huckleberry. Louisiana and Oklahoma, the strawberry. Massachusetts and West Virginia, the cranberry. The blueberry is the state fruit of Maine and New Jersey. North Carolina has a state blue berry. It should come as no surprise that it is the blueberry. They also have a state red berry, the strawberry.

Anyway, my original point was that frozen berries are great for snacking. And they're also great for milkshakes. But do you know what's even more fun than a homemade berry milkshake?

Turning it into a Berry Silly Milkshake!

Berry Silly Milkshake

Ingredients:

• frozen berries (I use blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries)
• vanilla ice cream
• milk
• candy eyeballs
• sprinkles, colored sugar, etc. 

Steps: 

Put equal parts FROZEN (not defrosted and not fresh) berries and vanilla ice cream into a blender. Add a little bit of milk and blend. Add more milk to make it thinner, more ice cream to make it thicker, or more berries to make it berry-er. 

Pour the milkshake into a glass and start decorating! There are no rules. Be creative! Trevor started with a face of yellow sugar, then added candy eyeballs, black sprinkle hair, an orange pearl nose, and a blue sprinkle mouth. 

I went a little simpler - just candy eyeballs, black sprinkle hair, a black pearl nose, and a blueberry mouth. 

Give it a try!