Shakes (closed)

As far as weeks go, it definitely could’ve been a more productive one where all things blog related are concerned. First of all, it turns out my beloved laptop (we shall call her Kerrigan) must remain I the shop for another short while. Then if that weren’t annoying enough, any spare laptops that were at my disposal have closed up and gone packing down to Kerry for the weekend! In a way I’m glad to see them go since all of them were slower than a roast cooking in Heston Blumenthal’s oven, but on the flip side it left me with no option but to resort to the iPhone or house PC to write this up on. I can barely manage ten words with that little touch qwerty keypad, so in very un-dramatic fashion and for the first time ever, I present to you a Consumed blog entry composed entirely on a near decade old family computer!

Apt (or ironic?) then that this entry via what’s quite possibly Dublin’s oldest PC be concerned with the very newest chapter in its rich foodish tapestry. That’s right, today we’re gonna look at Dame street’s latest institution for food lovers and students alike: Shakes milkshake bar.

                              

Open for little under the two-month mark by now, Shakes has been selling itself on the basis that it is Dublin’s only dedicated milkshake bar. Often you hear a line like that and take it with a pinch of salt; a certain pastry café just up the road will, after all, lay claim to serve up the best carrot cake in the city. Carrot cake - and the scale thereof - is entirely subjective of course, but that doesn’t stop such a line from drawing in the customers to try said baked goods. In Shake’s case however, their hook of a claim is nothing but the truth! Eddie Rocket’s may have carried the milkshake torch in Dublin over the last few decades, but it was always about the burgers for them; shakes and malts were simply a small part of the bigger picture. The only frequent alternative has, up until recently, been MacDonald’s. The niche was there to be exploited like bagels, smoothies and gourmet burgers before it. Ultimately, a young man named Wassim Dakik arrived from London, grabbed the challenge by the straws and did exactly that.

Two things will probably strike you about Shakes once you happen upon it: 1) their incredible location, directly opposite Starbucks on the College Green and only a matter of metres from Trinity College itself, and 2) the queue that will more than likely be spilling out of the door and onto the street. These two naturally go hand in glove, and as such you will have to wait to finally get to the milkshake itself but the sheer popularity of it all after only a matter of weeks should be more than enough to assure you that it is definitely worth the wait. If not, I will!

Ordering works like this: in front of you is a counter; behind it banks and banks of chocolate bars, sweets, biscuits, cereals and almost every other delectable that you remember growing up with. Custard creams, bourbons, Skittles, chocolate digestives, Cadbury’s Crème Eggs; they’re all there and in ample supply! Above the counter and a small army of staff you’ll find the menu board. Take note of it, you’ll be staring at it for a while in either awe at realising what’s about to be done with your confectionary of choice, or inability to choose from the plethora of options. If and once you get around to selecting a base flavour, toppings and boosts can be added afterwards. Vegetarian? Shakes will serve you up a milkshake of organic soya milk and ice cream instead of the regular fare. I was slight disappointed that they didn’t offer a malt option, but I’m sure that this will be suggested to Wassim at some stage given that it only takes a spoonful or two of Horlicks powder.

Edit: after having gotten in touch with Wassim himself, it turns our that Shakes do indeed offer malt as an option, but it was left off the menu by mistake.

As for the base options in particular, most of them fall under ‘chocolate bar shakes’. Without going into a novelised list, there are fifty-seven different kinds covered with almost equal attention given to Cadbury’s, Nestle and Mars. You’ll even find some interesting particulars in there such as Reese’s Cups, Terry’s Chocolate Orange and even Hersheys (well, the European version that doesn’t have that terrible aftertaste!), as well as everything you’d expect from your local newsagent’s. A handful of household name sweets, biscuits and cereals all get a look in elsewhere, as does fruit for those of your who can’t quite tear yourselves away from smoothie addiction just yet. All of these will set you back a paltry three euro for a small sized serving, three-fifty for a large. Separate to the rest is a (slightly more expensive at four-fifty each) VIP milkshake menu, which features a list of more intricate house recipes. I tried two milkshakes altogether: the VIP chocoholic that included Fererro Rocher, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and a flake to top it off with, and a plain chocolate digestive shake. Both tasted exactly the part, and were far lighter than I expected them to be!

The only downside to the overall experience is of course that moderation means you can’t try everything on the menu, and with the number of tantalising options screaming at you it’s hard not to regret choosing just one. Or two. Or three, and so on. Sometimes an abundance of choice can be counter productive in the catering industry, but in Shake’s case, the fundamental simplicity of those options only serves as a means to draw in repeat customers from the word go! They also offer a ten percent discount for students, which will only serve to keep them coming thicker and faster if the idea of drinking something ‘random’ (shudder!) didn’t already appeal.

In a nutshell, Shakes has gotten off to a roaring start and looks to be setting the benchmark for what could become the city centre’s latest craze. They offer a simple fare that appeals not only to the typical Dublin love of all things trendy, but also our inner children that want nothing more than to see our favourite chocolate and sweets mixed up into a creamy beverage. The queues continue to run out the door on the worst of days, so it wouldn’t be any surprise to see this little business venture of Wassim’s expand in the not too distant future.

Shakes
15, College Green,
Dublin 2

www.facebook.com/shakes.milkshakebar

Rebecca's Tuxedo Cookies

One of the many things Rebecca, my wonderful girlfriend, is good at is baking. Particularly cookies; I discovered this one evening upon arriving home from a bad day in work to a plate of wholesome, chocolate chip delights were waiting for me. Yes, they were made from a dough that both of us had mixed up a couple of nights beforehand, but her way of forming them produced a much more satisfying, thick cookie.

Back then, white chocolate and raspberries had been the key ingredients but I wasn’t entirely happy enough with the end result to post it up on the blog. No offence to the excellent cookies Rebecca made, I’m just a perfectionist. If the first batch of any recipe I take on doesn’t go well then I pretty much forget writing anything until the next bout. Roll on a couple of months and we tried again, only this time with more successful and ‘interesting’ results. The difference? I’d been told by Marion a while previous about a style of cheesecake called the Tuxedo; dark and white chocolate flavour as the name implies. I thought to myself: ‘surely this approach can be applied to cookies, right?’ In hope of not infringing any copyright I might not be aware of, I’m pleased to tell you that in can! So, perfected with a big help from her lovely self, I present to you Rebecca’s (and slightly my own) Tuxedo cookies.

The dough recipe is adapted from one I found at the start of the year on Refined Palate. You can follow the original here.

Makes 24-30 cookies

410g self-raising flour
125g cream flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sodium bicarbonate
2 tbs cocoa powder
250g sugar
250g brown sugar
440g soft butter
2 eggs
1 tbs vanilla essence
2 large bars of white chocolate
2 large bars of plain, dark chocolate

In a medium sized bowl, mix the self-raising flour, cream flour, baking power and sodium bicarbonate. Set aside. In a separate, larger bowl, add the sugar, brown sugar and butter. Stir and scrape the sides of the bowl until you achieve a smooth mixture with no lumps of butter left wanting. Now add the eggs and vanilla essence, stirring until they are well combined and the mixture is again smooth. Begin to add the flour, but not all at once; this will make things very difficult and messy. Instead, add a small amount at a time whilst stirring constantly.

Once you have fully combined the flour and achieved acceptable levels of doughvinity, separate half of the mixture into the bowl that previously held the flour. Add the cocoa powder to one of the mixture halves and stir until properly combined. Grease a sheet of greaseproof paper and line a baking tray with it, then preheat the oven to 190º c. Take the white and dark chocolate bars and break them into small chunks, just large enough to make sizeable chocolate chips in the finished cookies (think everyone’s favourite, M&S sized!). Set aside.

Now comes the fun part: take a piece of dough roughly the same size as the ball of your thumb (a little bigger won’t hurt!) from either bowl and stick them together. Remember that wetting your fingers in water before you handle the dough is a time-saver, as otherwise it will stick and become difficult to work with. Gently push the cocoa dough around the other, with the aim being to make a swirling pattern or to at least end up with cookies that are a little more interesting than half brown, half white discs. Pat the combined dough balls into a roughly spherical shape (I find the best way to do this is just to toss them back and forth between your hands, as per Rebecca’s teaching) and place on the baking tray in sets of no more than six at a time. Push each one down ever so slightly so that each one sticks to its spot, but not so much that you flatten them entirely. The higher they sit on the tray, the thicker they will be and thick, wholesome cookies are what we aim for! As for diameter, I find that if the dough on the tray is roughly one and a half to two inches across then you're going to end up with a good three to four inch in diamater cookie. The good thing here is that you've plenty of dough to experiment with, so find the size that's correct for you and nobody else. Just remember, the secret is to not flatten them.

You may notice that I never mentioned to add the chocolate chunks as per usual when mixing the dough. Personally, I find it much handier to add them as the final step before baking since this will allow you to decide exactly how they’re dispersed. Mixing them in can be a little hit and miss by comparison, unless you use excessive amounts of chocolate to compensate. So, simply take as many chunks as you like and gently press them into each individual cookie. My personal twist on this recipe is to keep the dark chocolate in the cocoa half of the cookie and mirror this with the white chocolate, but Rebecca does the opposite by placing the dark chocolate in the white dough. It really depends on preference, but I find that separating either set of chunks into their matching dough gives a more defined difference between either half. It’s all horses and courses at the end of the day, so do exactly as you wish!

Place the now chunked up cookies into the oven and bake for between eight to ten minutes. Remove once the white dough halves begin to brown slightly and place on a wire rack to cool for at least twenty minutes. Rinse and repeat until you have an entire batch. Use it to wow your friends, make new ones or just enjoy on your own with a big glass of milk!

Tesco Finest Freshly Squeezed Orange Juice Ice Lollies

I have a confession to make: I'm a slave to Tesco. Yup, it's where the majority of my had earned money that isn't being spent in restaurants goes, on an almost nightly basis at this stage! Whilst other Dublin foodies are off buying fresh ingredients from the various markets and high quality food halls dotted around the city in their ample spare time, I walk the aisles at midnight looking for somebody, anybody to tell me where I might find stem ginger. Instead of haggling for a discount at the weekends, I tear my hair out as I once again am told that an unexpected item is in the bagging area. It's the predicament you find yourself in when you live bang in the middle of the lamentably market-shy North Side and work until between seven to ten on most nights.

Thankfully, I'm not alone; most of you will find yourself in a similar situation. Even better is that it isn't really a bad one at all; Tesco, in general, offer a suitable range of ingredients with special emphasis on the exotic in some of their larger stores. You aren't going to find them selling a wheel of Bluebell Falls cheese or jamon Iberico freshly cut from the leg, but everything you need to make a varied sushi platter is ready and waiting. There are also any number of gems you can discover in the 'Finest' range, a line of food products that are touted as being just a slight cut above the rest. In many cases this is true, some not so much. The gems I speak of are those that exceed any and all expectations; some making you question why they aren't being served in your standard restaurant for treble the price!

One such gem is the Finest freshly squeezed orange juice ice lollies. Yes, the name is a mouthful and looks to be sexed up M&S style to deceive, but there actually is a surprising amount of orange juice in there. 83% to be exact! You can deduce as much from the first taste; the flavour is remarkably close to that of a real, tangy orange. This sensation is enhanced by the amount of pulp in each lolly, a lot of which you'll find accumulated at the bottom (top?) of the stick as you get further down. The ice itself is extremely delicate once slightly thawed, and crumbles delightfully where other ice lollies tend to flake and fracture.

Personally, I've found these little frozen delights to be a fantastic way to deal with a hangover; they're light, cold and refreshing, without offending your stomach too much. Also noteworthy is the fact that, for a treat, they're rather healthy! All of that orange juice is your standard source of vitamin C, and each lolly contains just ninety calories.

With summer having already shown its head peeking around the corner and it looking to be very much a good one, we're going to need ice lollies. Lots of them. The Finest orange ice lollies will never quite catch on in the same way that a Tangle Twister has, but they will cost you less in the long run at only €2.45 for a box of four. That works out at sixty cent per lolly; effective time travel back to the early nineties. You'll get a much better and more refreshing taste experience for your buck as well, so what are you waiting for? Head on down and stock up for the summer!

Malt Shakes: a Flavour Experimalt

I know your secret Eddie. Rocket, that is. I’ve always had a big thing for their malt shakes, as does almost everybody else who I’ve ordered try one at some stage or another. Nothing quite beats one when you’re surrounded by 1950’s style decor with the Beach Boys piping in from above (NB: I don’t care what those signs on the wall say, the Jukeboxes do not work!). It doesn’t take a genius to see how they’re made, you just watch them do it over the counter. It starts with a few scoops of flavoured ice cream, then you add a piled high teaspoon or two of malt powder and finally give the whole thing a quick whirl in a milkshake mixer. The problem for me was always the powder itself though. I was convinced it was a specially made mix brought in from a wholesaler’s in a land both far and away, virtually impossible to obtain short of leaping in and grabbing the entire box. All hope seemed lost, but I usually do try to concentrate on that glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. This time it came in the form of my brother getting a job in the Santry branch of Eddie Rocket’s. Screw their secret sauce, I wanted to know what the malt powder was called, or where you could buy some! Do you want to know what he told me? ...It’s Horlicks. And it wouldn’t surprise me if half of you knew that already, or had just guessed even. Either way, after getting over the embarrassment I quickly popped on into Dunnes and bought myself some. What followed was an evening of malt experiments with numerous casualties: about a litre of milk, more than one tub of ice cream, two bananas, a package of blueberries, half a packet of ginger nut biscuits... The list goes on, but they didn’t all perish in vain since for the most part they all made quite delicious malt shakes. Whether or not that’s courtesy of Eddie’s or Horlick’s I really don’t know anymore but nonetheless, here are a few of the mixtures I came up with:


Coffee malt shake, serves 2/3

300ml fresh, cold milk
2 tsp of instant coffee
170g of vanilla ice cream
1 ½ tbs Horlicks powder

Before you begin, make sure to remove the ice cream from the freezer a good fifteen/twenty minutes prior to actually making the malt so that it softens; this will make speed up the process, especially if you have to finish them by hand! Once the ice cream is suitably soft, you’re ready to go.

Pour the milk into a tall container, for example a jug or measuring beaker. If you don’t have anything of this description to use then a large, deep bowl will do instead. Before adding the coffee, dissolve it in a very small amount of water so that you won’t be left with any stray granules that may escape the following steps. Add it to the milk and stir, then add the ice cream (if you have no regard for precise measurements – and I wouldn’t blame you when – then you should be aiming for roughly six generous scoops) and the Horlicks powder.

Finally, blend the mixture. Personally, I prefer to do this with a handheld blender as this gives you more control over the consistency of the mixture in a shorter space of time. A regular blender will do, but you will need to stir and push down any of the ice cream that isn’t caught. Otherwise, stir vigorously by hand until you get a smooth consistency. Taste, and if you feel it needs more malt then add another teaspoonful; this really is a matter of personal taste, I love mine very malty but the measure I've given is average. If you feel like experimenting, use a different flavour of ice cream instead of vanilla. Chocolate will of course work well in this case, as may another flavour. Do you like your malts thick? then simply add more ice cream. This recipe should give you a good milkshakeish consistency, but it's all about preference at the end of the day. Serve as a dessert or with a good old fashioned burger n’ fries!

Oreo malt shake, serves 2/3

300ml fresh, cold milk
6 Oreo cookies, crushed
170g vanilla ice cream
1 ½ tbs Horlicks powder

The process is almost identical to the coffee malt shake recipe above. Whilst waiting for the ice cream to soften, simply take a mortar and pestle to six Oreo cookies. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, wrap the cookies in a clean kitchen cloth and use a mallet or similar blunt object to bash them with until they're well broken up.


Assuming you will be finishing the mixture using a blender then do not crush the cookies too finely as leaving small chunks will make the overall shake more flavoursome. In the Oreo sense that is! If the mixing is to be done by hand then crush them more finely, but not into an outright powder. When ready, add the crushed Oreos to the milk before you add the ice cream and Horlicks powder. Serve on its own or with cream on top and a single Oreo cookie for decoration.

Banana malt shake, serves 2/3

300ml fresh, cold milk
2 small bananas
170g vanilla ice cream
2 tbs Horlicks powder

Again, simply follow the original set of instructions where adding and mixing the ingredients are concerned, only substitute the banana for the key flavour ingredient. A blender will, however, be required in this recipe as it can be difficult to achieve a smooth consistency by mashing and mixing the banana by hand. Slice both bananas in half and add to the milk prior to the ice cream and Horlicks. Blend. Note than in this particular recipe I have included an extra half tablespoon of Horlicks powder. This is because the banana flavour can be surprisingly strong, and on first attempt overpowered even the maltiness of the powder! Here is where I encourage you to experiment, to find the balance that’s right for you and your preferences. Either way, the malt will add body to the flavour but if you really like that malty taste then add more, it’s entirely up to you! Again, substituting chocolate ice cream for vanilla turns this into an even more interesting shake.

And that’s all my experimenting yielded for tonight. Well, in terms of success rather... but there are inumerable flavour combinations that you can try with malt shakes. It’s exciting, it’s fun; It’s definitely something I’ll do again. Bearing that in mind, if anybody has any suggestions then I’d love to hear them!