Dirty Work: Making Whiskey-Spiked Milkshakes with Dandelion Chocolate
All photos by Farideh Sadeghin.

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Dirty Work: Making Whiskey-Spiked Milkshakes with Dandelion Chocolate

In this installment of Dirty Work, Greg D'alesandre and Molly Gore of Dandelion Chocolate make an adult-friendly version of a childhood classic, because whiskey makes everything better.

Welcome back to Dirty Work, our new series of dispatches from the MUNCHIES Garden. We're inviting chefs, bartenders, and personalities in the world of food and drink to explore our edible playground and make whatever the hell inspires them with our rooftop produce. In this installment, Greg D'alesandre and Molly Gore of Dandelion Chocolate make an adult-friendly version of a childhood classic.

When chefs come to visit us at the MUNCHIES Garden, we tend to get fancy.

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Grilled duck and pickled green almonds. Ostrich eggs and oysters. Branzino crudo with peach vinegar.

Delicious, but not exactly your standard weeknight dinner.

But when San Francisco's renowned Dandelion Chocolate decided to stop by on a screamingly sunny day a couple weeks back, we had an instant mind-meld:

Boozy chocolate milkshakes. Fuck yes.

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Molly Gore and Greg D'alesandre of Dandelion Chocolate. All photos by Farideh Sadeghin.

Of course, not every milkshake is created equally. And although there is something to be said for a classic parlor-style shake (or a homemade one with a generous squirt of egg cream staple Fox's U-Bet, because Brooklyn pride), there is even more to be said for making your own syrup out of premium chocolate.

That's where Dandelion comes in.

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Despite its name, the Mission District-based bean-to-bar operation is no dainty flower when it comes to chocolate. Its single-origin bars are nothing but cocoa beans and sugar, without added cocoa butter, emulsifiers, or flavorings. Because of that, the nuances that are often lost in lower-quality chocolate punch powerfully through in Dandelion's bars.

RECIPE: Boozy Chocolate Milkshake

In the garden, we were joined by Molly Gore, a chocolate maker at Dandelion, and Greg D'alesandre, Dandelion's chocolate "sourcerer" who improbably fell into the world of chocolate after a six-year stint at Google.

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Both Greg and Molly cautioned that what they were planning to prepare was not to be found on Dandelion's cafe menu, nor had they made syrup from whole chocolate before. Chocolate syrup is typically made with cocoa powder and corn syrup, but they opted to try one that's more like a thin, flavor-packed ganache.

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To widen the experiment even further, Greg and Molly decided to add a little chocolate mint—an herb that tastes exactly like it sounds—to the syrup itself. Rather than just blending in whole herbs, however, they borrowed a technique from ice cream-making and steeped the chocolate mint in milk, which has the distinct capacity to draw out both the fat- and water-soluble flavor compounds from the mint.

"This chocolate is really acidic and really intense, and the mint cuts that really nicely," Greg said. "And I'll be honest: If there's one thing I like, it's a mint chocolate milkshake."

Same.

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Back in the kitchen, the pair got to work. After a mere 15-minute steeping session, we had ourselves a pot of deliciously minty, chocolatey milk—with no chocolate even added yet.

Once the herbs were strained out, Molly and Greg whisked in whole chopped chocolate (Dandelion's Madagascar 70% variety, which has distinct notes of tart fruit) to the still-warm milk, along with some sugar and a touch of corn syrup to help bind the mix.

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While we waited for the syrup to cool, Greg and Molly plotted their next move: booze, of course. Any ol' whiskey would do, but they brought along a prized bottle from the very first batch produced by Golden Gate Whisky, a new brand based in Livermore, California.

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To keep with the California theme, they also brought some Blood Orange Bitter from Workhorse Rye, which is more like an amaro than a dash of Regan's.

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After a few swigs of the Golden Gate to test its suitability for the recipe (uh-huh), Greg and Molly were feeling ready to shake shit up.

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They quickly assembled everything in a blender—chocolate syrup, booze, and a pint of vanilla ice cream—and blitzed the mix to creamy, frothy perfection.

"Oh, that smells amazing," Greg said. "It's oxidizing all of the flavors of the blood orange, so the bitters are really coming out now."

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We have to say, no joke, that this was one of the best milkshakes we've ever tasted. Rich, dark, and ever so slightly tangy, the creamy shake tempered the heat of the high-octane whiskey and brought out its roasty, oaky notes.

"Holy crap," Greg added, tasting his own invention. "This is really good."

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We couldn't agree more.

Store-bought syrup will always be there, but if you want to up your milkshake game to the next level this summer, you might as well make your own.