Avocado Is The Creamy Ingredient Your Milkshakes Are Missing

If you think there's only room for sweet fruits and dairy desserts in your milkshakes, the addition of avocados may change your perspective entirely. The buttery yet delicate undertones of avocados provide a creamy texture for the blended drink without overloading it with the sort of richness you would get from a thicker, fattier dairy product like ice cream or whole milk. Not only that, but the nutritional value of avocados will add some vitamins and minerals to your shake.

Even if you love avocados in basic guacamole recipes, as an addition to a burrito or hamburger, or as a topper for a citrusy salad, you may think of the fruit as a savory, not a sweet, pairing. Avocados on their own don't have a particularly strong flavor that will overpower the food you cook it with. On the contrary, their taste is remarkably mild, which is what makes them so amenable to being a good mix-in. Avocado's true versatility shines in its smooth, soft texture, which is perfect for mashing. It stands to reason, then, that avocados could stand up to a blender full of other ingredients that fall on the more sugary end of the spectrum.

Adding avocado to a shake isn't a new concept created by TikTok, either. It's a practice that has existed for years in cultures all across the globe, wherever avocados grow, from Latin America to Southeast Asia. The popularity of avocado milkshakes in the Philippines originally came from a dish called avocado lamaw, in which unmashed avocado is mixed with milk, sugar, and shaved ice. In neighboring Vietnam, a smoothie called sinh to bo uses condensed milk as a sweetener, while Indonesia puts a buzzy spin on the concoction and adds coffee to a drink called jus alpukat.

Over in Brazil, avocados are thought of more as a tropical fruit that should be paired with sweeteners as opposed to the American perception of avocados as a vegetable-like food that's best enjoyed salty and savory. Brazilians will often squeeze lime juice into their avocado smoothies to give them a citrusy kick; combined with sugar, this variation feels like a beachside beverage. Morocco also has its own spin on the avocado milkshake, sometimes swapping out the sugar for honey and traditionally also adding orange flower water, though plain old orange juice will mix in nicely, too.

The simplest form of an avocado milkshake is avocado, milk, and sugar all blended together, but this is by no means the only way to enjoy the blended drink. Swapping out regular whole milk for almond or coconut milk works particularly well here since the consistency of the avocado makes up for the loss of creaminess. It may sound off-putting to the uninitiated, but chocolate pairs deceptively well with avocado — the two work so well together that there also exists plenty of recipes for chocolate and avocado desserts like mousse and cookies.

Luckily, avocado also pairs nicely with a whole slate of fruits, too. If you're looking to add some sweetness to your shake and perhaps make more of a morning smoothie than a dessert, options like mangos, strawberries, bananas, and oranges are great options. In fact, you probably don't even need to add extra sugar if you blend your avocado with fruit. Once you start drinking avocado milkshakes, you'll start to question what the green fruit doesn't go well with.