Drink #21: ‘mel’s milkshake’ | Lore

The twenty-first drink of my book as a bev series is a coconut milkshake with hints of pistachio and dark chocolate. This bev is based on my hardback copy of Lore by Alexandra Bracken.

This is a vegan friendly concoction! After seeing The Odyssey last month, I was inspired to revisit the mythology inspired reads in my collection before purchasing new ones, and plucked this one off of my shelf.

This beverage’s name is:

‘mel’s milkshake’

Name Explained: Calling this a milkshake to keep the alliteration going, but it’s technically closer to a smoothie since there’s no ice cream involved. The main character’s name is Melora, and she goes by Lore, another nickname for that is Mel so that’s where the name comes from.

Dark Cocoa Coconut Smoothie: As mentioned above, there is no ice cream in this drink. I could’ve opted for a coconut ice cream in the base instead of coconut milk + ice, but I’m trying to make these as healthy as possible so I didn’t. I did add shredded coconut in addition to the milk to ensure the flavor really came through. To get the slightly gray hue of the novel’s cover I added a bit of black cocoa powder and the result was a near exact color match.

Pistachio Coconut Topping: Since I wanted this to be a simple and easy drink compared to my other concoctions I decided to use a premade whipped coconut topping. It keeps the drink vegan and isn’t overpoweringly sweet. Simple alternatives are coconut whipped cream or canned coconut that can be mixed by hand and sweetened as desired. The novel’s cover has the text and eyes shine rather gold but when held to the light they appear more green so I decided to use some crushed pistachio to bring that out.

RATING: Overall I’d give the final drink a 4.70.

Flavor Combination: All of the elements in this drink worked really well together. The cocoa was subtle enough that it didn’t overpower the coconut, as was the pistachio.

Ease: This was one of the easiest drinks to create. All the effort required was dropping everything into the blender. The only additional element that needed some work was the crushing of the pistachio, and that wasn’t particularly difficult either. If a food processor or coffee grinder isn’t on hand, using a ziplock bag and hitting it with something heavy does the trick too!

Appearance: This iteration of the drink is the second and final version, and I’m pretty happy with how it came out. The first involved an attempt at using some sweet potato as a garnish and the result was heinous, lol. I’ll be keeping that in the vault. I think the coconut chips were a fun way to try and replicate the woven snakes.

Ways to Improve: For the sake of the visuals I do think I exaggerated the amount of coconut cream at the top of the drink so that the coconut chips would protrude from the cup and resemble the novel’s medusa-like cover. I think that made the overall drink taste a tad sweeter when everything was mixed together. So, going forward, I’d reduce that amount to make the drink a more guilt-free indulgence.