Palm Springs Date Shake
RECIPE: Excerpted from Hot Date!: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, From Party Food to Everyday Feasts by Rawaan Alkhatib, © 2025. Published by Chronicle Books.
Photo: Linda Xiao
An iconic milkshake that celebrates the humble date.
Rawaan Alkhatib spotlights the humble date in her book HOT DATE!: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, From Party Food to Everyday Feasts. In the cookbook, she shares recipes ranging from ancient Babylon to today, such as the Palm Springs date shake. The Coachella Valley recipe she writes about is “a true milkshake, not a smoothie: very sweet and decadent, with the dates providing almost more of a texture than a taste—delicious little flecks of skin and fibrous date flesh.”
Ingredients
- 1 cup vanilla ice cream
- 1/4 cup whole milk, as cold as possible
- 3 Medjool dates, pitted and finely chopped
- Tools:small bowl, blender
Preparation
In a small bowl, soak the chopped dates in 1/4 cup of hot water for about 10 minutes, then chill in the refrigerator until cool.
In a blender, blend the dates, their soaking water, and the milk until smooth and frothy. Add the ice cream and pulse until just blended.
Serve cold.
NOTEYou can use 1/4 cup of date crystals in place of the Medjools if you want to be super faithful to the Palm Springs version; just soak in warm water as you would the chopped dates.