Yes, it’s a new year, which means smoothie recipes abound, because health! In fact, I myself just whipped up five super-delicious smoothie recipes that I’ll be sharing with you sometime this or next week. But while I had my blender out, I realized that I had never properly celebrated my birthday, which was on December 27th. And by “properly celebrated,” I mean I didn’t have classic yellow birthday cake.
Truthfully, I typically prefer cheesecake on my birthday, but I refused to make my own birthday dessert this year on principle, because I have done so for the past several years. Phillip was supposed to run out to my favorite local bakery to get something for me to celebrate, but he was sick on my birthday, so I have to cash that rain check in soon.
In the meantime, I thought it wouldn’t be breaking my promise too much if I just made a quick, simple birthday milkshake. But in reality, this was one of the hardest things I’ve ever made. No, it’s not difficult to put together. Just plop all the ingredients in and blend. But I swore to myself I would get the most artificial of artificial ingredients to complete my mission: imitation vanilla extract, imitation butter extract, store-bought ice cream, and Cool Whip.
If you follow my blog at all, you know that I typically make my own vanilla, my own ice cream, and real, fresh whipped cream. And when butter flavor is needed, I add butter! But the grocery store cakes of my youth were for sure not using the real stuff, so I wanted to stay true to that. And in the spirit of letting others do the work, and also in the spirit of “birthdays come but once a year!” I shoved all the fakeness into my grocery basket.
I also dropped off into the liquor store because I found out that there is cake batter vodka and are you for real? I feel very strongly about boozy desserts.
For some reason I feel the need to get extra girly (read: pink) on my birthday. And that seems to fit with all the artificiality in this recipe, because I’m normally not pink-crazy. Maybe because I missed out on the whole girly birthday party thing because I was born so close to Christmas?
Whatever the deep-seated psychological reason is, throwing pink stuff all over the place for my birthday makes me happy. If it makes you happy, too, make yourself a boozy birthday shake. It’s a piece of cake! (Ugh. I tried to stop myself.)
GROWNUP GIRL PINK BIRTHDAY CAKE MILKSHAKE
- 2 cups vanilla ice cream
- ½ cup whole milk
- 1½ ounces Smirnoff Iced Cake Vodka (or other cake-flavored vodka)*
- ¼ teaspoon clear imitation vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon imitation butter extract
- 1½ tablespoons pink sprinkles, plus more for topping
- 2 tablespoons Cool Whip
- Gold sanding sugar sprinkles (optional)
- Combine ice cream, milk, vodka, and extracts in a blender and blend until smooth. Stir in pink sprinkles by hand. Pour milkshake into a tall glass. Pipe Cool Whip onto the top of the milkshake, and sprinkle with more pink sprinkles and gold sanding sugar. Drink with a pink straw (obvi).
