Wendy's Frosty Dairy Dessert Recipe

A Wendy's Frosty is a frozen dairy dessert made from milk, sugar, corn syrup and cream, thicker than a milkshake and softer than soft serve. It is dairy, not dairy-free. To copy the chocolate one for two, blend three cups of vanilla ice cream with half a cup of milk and a tablespoon and a half of cocoa, then firm it up in the freezer for fifteen minutes.

What a Frosty is made of, and whether it is dairy

Wendy's lists the ingredients of the Classic Chocolate Frosty: milk, sugar, corn syrup, cream, whey, nonfat dry milk, cocoa, guar gum, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gum, natural flavour, carrageenan, calcium sulfate, sodium citrate, dextrose and vitamin A palmitate. The allergen line reads: contains milk.

So a Frosty is a dairy product from the first ingredient on, and it is not dairy-free. Wendy's describes it on the same page as thick enough to use a spoon and smooth enough to use a straw. Its menu gives 190 to 510 calories, depending on the size. One serving of the copy, about 12 ounces, comes to about 460 calories by USDA figures.

The copy below is a reconstruction, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Wendy's.

Recipe

Wendy's Chocolate Frosty

A reconstruction of Wendy's Chocolate Frosty — vanilla ice cream blended with a little milk and cocoa and firmed up in the freezer until it is thick enough for a spoon. Two servings of about 12 ounces.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

5 min

Total

25 min

Serves

2

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup cold whole milk
• 1 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 cups vanilla ice cream

Instructions

1. Blend the milk, the cocoa and the vanilla for 10 seconds, until the cocoa has dissolved.
2. Add the ice cream straight from the freezer and blend on low speed for 20 to 30 seconds, stopping to push it down, just until smooth.
3. Put the blender jar in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes, then stir. The Frosty should hold a spoon upright for a moment and still go through a wide straw.
4. Spoon into two cold glasses.

Nutrition

Calories:

460

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Why it is a dairy dessert and not ice cream

Ice cream is a legal term in the United States. The federal standard, 21 CFR 135.110, says that ice cream contains not less than 10 percent milkfat. The Takeout writes that the Frosty falls below that, which is why it is sold as a frozen dairy dessert.

Milk comes before cream in the ingredient list, which fits: in a product by that order there is more milk than cream.

Wendy's Frosty texture: between a shake and soft serve

The Frosty was among the first five items on Wendy's menu. By Wikipedia's account the founder, Dave Thomas, wanted it thick enough to need a spoon, and its consistency has been described as between a milkshake and soft-serve ice cream. The first Frosty mixed chocolate and vanilla, because Thomas thought pure chocolate would overwhelm the hamburgers; a vanilla Frosty followed in 2006.

Two things give that texture at home.

• Little liquid. Half a cup of milk to three cups of ice cream is far less than a milkshake takes. The blender needs help: stop it and push the ice cream down.
• Time in the freezer. Blending warms the mixture to milkshake thickness. Fifteen to twenty minutes in the freezer bring it back to the point where a spoon stands.

Left in the freezer for an hour it sets hard. Ten minutes on the counter and a stir bring it back.

Light on the chocolate

A tablespoon and a half of cocoa in three cups of vanilla ice cream keeps the chocolate light, as in the first Frosty, which mixed chocolate with vanilla. For a vanilla Frosty, leave the cocoa out. With a mint and cookie sauce swirled in, this is the Thin Mints Frosty.

A Frosty without dairy

For a version without dairy, the copy can be made with a dairy-free vanilla frozen dessert and oat milk in the same amounts. It comes out a little icier.

Other thick drinks for a spoon on this site are the OREO McFlurry and the French Silk Pie Blizzard. A shake made with soda is the Dr Pepper shake.