At first glance, this looks like a super easy recipe with satisfying food that will be easy to take on any day-trip to multi-week trip. And, it is a very affordable recipe with the 4 lb bag of frozen berries from Costco as the most expensive item at $9.99. I knew I would use all the berries in some manner, so I didn’t mind dehydrating the whole bag. But, as I got to the end of trying it out this milk shake at home, this recipe ended up being a bit of a clean-up nightmare and it really didn’t have a great flavor either.
Border-to-Border Berry Milk Shake Details
- Dehydrate frozen berries – any
- Add dried banana chips
- Add powdered milk
- Add powdered buttermilk
Blend all ingredients until a fine powder. Store in zip-lock bag. While on hike, just add water to a few tablespoons of powdered smoothie, and ta-dah, you have a Berry Milkshake in the wilderness! Well, almost.
Dehydrating
I use the Excalibur 3900B 9 Tray Deluxe Dehydrator, Black.
I anticipated a big mess so I opted for parchment paper over my dehydrator sheets.
Additionally, I was a little nervous that the berries would stick to the parchments papers because as the berries dried, they created a little wet glob of berry mass and a juice stain on the parchment paper. I hoped that it would not stick to the paper and at 12 hours, as the berries were almost crisp, it was clear that I would not have a problem. I just pulled the berry away from the paper and it freed itself without effort.
Blueberries are dangerous. I found myself picking them out of the mix and eating them like a starving man eating M&M’s. You might want to dehydrate extra’s just in case you anticipate having a yum attack and killing off all of your blueberries in one sitting.
Will It Blend
I got the blender out, measured out 1 cup freshly dehydrated berries, 1 cup banana chips, 1 cup powdered milk. Blend, blend, blend. It took about 3 or four minutes and I was ready to taste my first cup of Border-to-Border Berry Milk Shake.
Poor Mixability and Fairly Bland Flavor
I felt total disappointment as I mixed the first tester. You know when you have a cheap protein powder and it takes forever to mix and it is still lumpy even after a thorough mixing. And then those dry lumps get in your teeth and coats the inside of your mouth. After a few attempts with a fork, then with a electric mixer, there was minimal improvement. I put all of the dry mix back in the blender and made a very fine powder; but that did not improve the mix-ability.
Additionally, the powdered mix coats everything…the cup, the spoon. And it does not clean up quickly nor easily. It is just a mess.
Lastly, the flavor is somewhat bland. Even after adding some sugar to one tester, it still doesn’t have a great flavor or mouth feel that makes me want to use this as a drink mix.
The saving grace: I can add this power to pancakes or muffins. So, I did not lose any money nor did I have to throw it out.
Final Thoughts
Best Part: Dehydrating a 4lb bag of berries – it made my whole garage smell wonderful
Worst Part: Almost unusable mix as a milk shake mix, bland flavor, very messy clean up
Total Grade: D- Skip this Milk Shake Recipe for your outdoor adventures
Border-to-Border Berry Milk Shake from Lipsmakin’ Backpackin’ by Tim and Christine Conners
Photo Credit: Bruce Stokes