My husband has been working on and off in Palm Springs California the past few months. Known for their excessive heat (temperatures have already reached 120°F/49°C this summer) and more importantly, dates. Each week when he comes home, he brings a huge stash of dates with him in all sorts of varieties that I did not know existed. I’ve enjoyed such varieties as blonde, brunette, honey, halawi and the best of all, medjool. Dates are a delicious, naturally sweet snack, but they are also so good used in recipes, both savory and sweet. The last visit home, my husband brought me a date cookbook. A fascinating read about the history of the date and the farming of them along with a ton of recipes. The most popular and easy recipe is the date shake and it is the unofficial drink of Palm Springs. When you pass through the cities of Palm Springs, there are date palms everywhere and the farming is serious business. The date shake supposedly dates back to the 1930’s and was invented by a date farmer. I’m sure they invented it as a delicious way to cool off in triple digit heat while working and they were much needed, I’m sure. When I made no-churn vanilla bean ice cream a few weeks ago, I’ve been using it up in recipes like chocolate pecan coated ice cream balls and now these date shakes. What goes really well with dates and vanilla ice cream? Salted caramel! So I decided to add a twist to this simple shake and add some of my homemade salted caramel sauce. It is so good! To ‘jazz up’ the mini milk bottles I served the shake in, I drizzled caramel sauce onto the inside of the bottles. To do this, I put some sauce into small ziptop bags, snipped off a corner then tilted the bottled and turned the bottle as I drizzled. This recipe yields 2, 8-ounce (236 ml) shakes. If you’ve tried this Salted Caramel Date Shake or any other recipe on the blog then don’t forget to rate the recipe and let me know how it turned out in the comments below. I love to hear from my readers!
