Best Ninja Creami Milkshake Recipes

My kid's exact words the first time I ran the Ninja Creami Milkshake program: "wait, it's a MACHINE that does this?" She'd been begging for milkshakes for a week and I'd been dodging it because I did not want to hand-scoop and blend six bowls of ice cream on a Tuesday. Then I remembered the Creami has a button for this specific problem, and now milkshake night is a thing that happens without me touching a blender at all.

Here's the roundup of the Creami milkshake recipes actually worth freezing a pint for, plus the two different ways to use the Milkshake program depending on whether you're starting from scratch or from a tub you already have in the freezer.

How the Milkshake program actually works

There are two legitimate ways to use it, and mixing them up is where people get confused.

The quick way: if you've already got a tub of regular ice cream, you don't freeze anything new. You scoop it straight into the pint container, pour in some milk, and run the Milkshake program, which SharkNinja describes as working more like a blender than a freeze-and-spin cycle. For a shake thin enough to sip through a straw, use about 1 1/2 cups of ice cream to 1/2 cup of milk. Want it thicker, more like a scoop shop shake you eat with a spoon first, go 1 3/4 cups of ice cream to 1/4 cup of milk. Cold ice cream and cold milk both matter here. Room temperature ice cream turns the whole thing soupy before the blades even finish.

The from-scratch way, which is what every recipe below actually does, is to mix your own flavored milk base, freeze it flat in the pint for a full 24 hours like a regular Creami base, then run it on the MILKSHAKE preset instead of Ice Cream. You get a thinner, more drinkable pour than a scoopable pint, but with way more control over the flavor since you built it yourself instead of starting from store-bought vanilla. If the first spin looks like a slushy snow cone instead of a shake, that's normal. Add a splash of cold milk and hit Re-spin. It smooths out every time.

Mix-ins work a little differently on this program too. Add candy, cookie chunks, or crushed pretzels to the base before it goes in the freezer if you want them chopped fine and distributed all the way through. If you want visible chunks that survive the spin, hold off and run the separate Mix-in program after the shake is done instead.

The recipes

Vanilla Malt is the one to start with if you want proof this thing can do a genuine diner-counter malt. Malted milk powder is the whole trick, dissolve it in a little warm milk first or you get gritty pockets in the final pour.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Milkshake leans hard into the combo everyone already knows works. Chocolate milk as the base instead of plain milk keeps it from tasting watered down once the peanut butter goes in.

Cookies and Cream Milkshake is the one my kid actually asked for by name, and it's basically a spinnable version of the drive-thru version, minus the wait in the car line.

Strawberry Banana Milkshake is the closest thing on this list to a smoothie that decided to commit to being a milkshake instead. Frozen strawberries do double duty, flavor and thickener.

Coffee Mocha Milkshake uses actual brewed and cooled coffee, not instant granules dumped in dry, and it makes a real difference in how it tastes once it's frozen and spun.

Salted Caramel Milkshake gets a hit of flaky sea salt on top, which sounds like a small thing until you taste how much it wakes up the caramel instead of letting it go one-note sweet.

Mint Chocolate Chip Milkshake is a little polarizing in my house, half the family wants mint anything, the other half acts personally offended by it. The mini chocolate chips stay crunchy enough after freezing that you still get texture, not just green milk.

Birthday Cake Milkshake uses actual white cake mix in the base, and it tastes closer to funfetti batter than to a bakery slice, in a good way.

Butterscotch Milkshake is the one nobody in my house had strong opinions about going in and everybody had strong opinions about coming out. Brown sugar in the base gives it a deeper, almost toffee edge that butterscotch sauce alone doesn't get you.

Black Forest Milkshake takes the chocolate and cherry combo from the cake and pours it. Cherry preserves instead of fresh cherries means it blends smooth instead of leaving chunks of fruit skin behind.

Toasted Coconut Milkshake is the one that surprised me most. Coconut milk, heavy cream, and cream of coconut stacked together make it richer than anything else on this list, and the toasted flakes on top add the crunch a milkshake usually doesn't have.

A couple things I've learned running this program a lot

Freeze the pint completely flat. If it freezes at an angle because you shoved it in next to a bag of frozen peas, you'll get a lopsided spin and a crumbly section that never quite smooths out even with a re-spin.

Don't skip the max-fill line. Milkshake bases expand a little differently than a straight ice cream base once they hit the blades, and an overfilled pint is the fastest way to end up with a mess in the outer bowl instead of a shake in a glass.

If you're going for the quick, no-freezing version with store-bought ice cream, start with less milk than you think you need. It's a lot easier to add a splash and re-run than to fix a shake that's already too thin.