These Halloween milkshakes are made with vanilla ice cream and an easy, homemade blueberry sauce, which creates a colorful, delicious base. Top it off with whipped cream and fun garnishes like meringue ghosts for a naturally-colored Halloween-themed drink. They’re naturally gluten-free, and you can easily adapt the recipe to be vegan.

Something like this Black Milkshake is more typical for Halloween with its black color and Oreo flavor, but I wanted something with a vibrant purple color. And a natural one at that!

So, I adapted my Blueberry Milkshake. It’s great as is, but I wanted the color to be more concentrated. So, for this recipe, you make a quick blueberry sauce, which only requires a few basic ingredients.

It only takes 3-5 minutes to simmer, meaning this extra step really doesn’t add much time to the full recipe. It’s so worth it for the stronger blueberry flavor and vibrant color.

Ingredients

Here’s an overview of what you’ll need. The full recipe is down below.

Blueberries – either fresh or frozen blueberries work here. If you’re out of blueberries, raspberries or blackberries make a great alternative. Raspberries are great for a blood-red color for a Halloween vampire theme!
Maple syrup – I used maple syrup, which works wonderfully because it dissolves easily and doesn’t affect the flavor of the milkshake (even when I used Grade C!). I’d avoid using honey unless you’re okay with a noticeable honey taste. Agave syrup or brown rice syrup are also excellent alternatives since they’re liquid and have a neutral flavor. If you prefer granulated sugar, keep in mind that it might not dissolve well in a cold milkshake, which could result in a slightly grainy texture. To prevent this, you could dissolve the sugar in a small amount of warm milk before adding it to the shake. I also used maple syrup for the rim of the glass, but you could use agave or simple syrup.
Milk – you can use any type of milk you’d like, except for coconut milk, unless you want some coconut flavor in your milkshake. Whether or not you’ll need milk depends on the ice cream you’re using, and most likely, you will. When I first made this recipe with a lower-quality store-bought vegan ice cream, I didn’t need any milk. However, when I used homemade ice cream and then my paleo ice cream recipe, I did need to add milk since it wouldn’t blend properly without it. I’ll explain more about this further below.
Vanilla ice cream – store-bought is great, but if you have some of this French Vanilla Ice Cream left over, you definitely won’t regret using it on the milkshake. 🙂 You’ll want to use dairy-free or vegan vanilla ice cream if you can’t have dairy.
Heavy cream – for topping the shakes with whipped cream. Use a vegan cream sub for a dairy-free version. Coconut whipped cream works if you don’t mind the coconut flavor.
Black sanding sugar – to decorate the rim of the glass. Any color of sanding sugar works here, so feel free to get creative. Or just omit it. For a more natural option, you could use the chocolate sauce in my Iced Mocha Latte. If you like chocolate together with blueberries, that is! I do not.
Meringue ghosts – I use these Ghost Meringues on top. If you don’t have time to make them, you can use candy eyeballs or another Halloween decoration instead.

Milk amount

The ideal ratio for regular milkshakes is typically around 3 parts ice cream to 1 part milk. Adding too much milk can make the shake too thin, while too little may make it difficult to blend.

But this recipe has 1 1/2 cups of blueberries, which add a lot of liquid. So you’ll only need about 3/4 cup to 1 cup of milk (180-240 ml) for 1 1/2 cups (355 ml) of ice cream.

I used the lower amount once with some store-bought vegan ice cream. The milkshake was SUPER runny.

The issue was that I used some very light and airy, rather than dense, ice cream. It was in a pint-sized container, but I could have easily fit the whole container all into a 1-cup measuring cup if I had just pressed it in there.

So if all you have is that kind of light ice cream, you might want to omit the milk and add it after blending and only if needed.

How to make Halloween milkshakes

This is just a visual overview of the process. Please scroll down the page for the full recipe. 🙂

If you don’t feel like making your own sauce, you can use store-bought blueberry sauce. I think jam would also work!

Or, if you don’t see the point of making such a small batch of sauce, you could make this Blueberry Maple Sauce to use on pancakes, Greek Yogurt Cheesecake, or Cheesecake Mousse and set a little aside for the milkshakes.

How to Make Ahead and Store

You can prepare most of the components ahead of time so that the milkshakes only take a minute or two to put together when you’re ready to serve them.

Blueberry sauce – make the blueberry sauce up to 3 days in advance and store it in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Whipped cream – whip the cream up to 24 hours in advance and keep it covered in the refrigerator.
Decorated glass rims – rim the glasses with sanding sugar ahead of time, then place them in the freezer until you’re ready to serve the milkshakes. Chilling the glasses also helps the sugar stay firmly in place.

The milkshakes themselves should be blended just before serving since they contain ice cream. Once everything else is ready, it only takes about a minute to add the ingredients to the blender and blend.

Yield

This recipe yields 1 1/2 cups (355 ml) of milkshake, which is enough for one standard 12-ounce milkshake glass.

If you want to make 3 large milkshakes like the ones in the photos, you’ll need to triple the recipe. I personally find a full 12-ounce milkshake to be quite a lot, so I usually split one with my husband.

You can also divide one batch among smaller glasses. For Halloween, I like using 3 small skull glasses. Mine are smaller, but these 6-ounce skull glasses would be a good size if you want to split one milkshake between two people.

Dairy-free and vegan options

This Halloween shake is already naturally gluten-free. Just double-check packaged items like ice cream and candy decorations to ensure they don’t contain gluten.

As I said above, if you can’t have dairy, use dairy-free/vegan milk, ice cream, and cream.

For the ice cream, I’ve tested this recipe with store-bought vegan vanilla ice cream as well as this vanilla Paleo Ice Cream for a paleo version. I was surprised that it came out so well.

That ice cream is amazing, but it does have a slight salted caramel flavor to it that I thought wouldn’t work well with a blueberry milkshake. I was so wrong!

The ghost meringues are dairy-free, but they’re not vegan. For that, you’ll need to make Vegan Meringue Ghosts.

Troubleshooting Tips

Milkshake too thick – add a splash of extra milk and blend again.
Milkshake too runny – add more ice cream and blend again.
Whipped cream too soft – make sure the heavy cream is cold before whipping. You can also chill the mixing bowl for about 15 minutes before starting.
Blueberry sauce too runny – simmer it for a few extra minutes until it thickens. If it’s still too thin, you can add a small amount of cornstarch mixed with water to thicken it quickly.

If you’re planning a Halloween meal, serve these milkshakes with Monster Burgers, Halloween Mac and Cheese, a Skeleton Veggie Tray or these Halloween Meatballs. For a party where smaller individual desserts are more practical, try these Frankenstein Cupcakes or Eyeball Cupcakes.

Other Halloween Drinks

These Non-alcoholic Halloween Punch and Witches’ Brew Drink recipes are perfect for the little ones!

For the adults, this Witches’ Brew Cocktail and Vampire’s Kiss Cocktail are super fun and easy to make.

I hope you’ll enjoy these fun and tasty milkshakes for Halloween! Let me know how they turned out for you in the comments below. Thanks! 🙂

Halloween Milkshakes