The burgers rock, the custard is cool, and the shakes may be the best you’ve ever had. The shakes at Shake Shack are so good because they’re made with the chain’s signature frozen vanilla custard which I’ve already hacked here. To make the Shake Shack Vanilla milkshake, you just add milk to the custard and blend it until smooth. Pour the creamy shake into a 16-ounce glass and today will be your new favorite cheat day.

Try my recipe for the Shake Shack Burger here.

What started as a single food cart in Madison Square Park in New York City in 2000 has become one of America's fastest-growing food chains. In 2014, Shake Shack filed for its initial public offering of stock, and shares rose by 147 percent on the first day of trading. The chain’s success can be attributed to a simple menu of great food that makes any bad day better, including juicy flat-grilled burgers, thick shakes, and creamy frozen custard.

Custard is made just like ice cream with many of the same ingredients, except custard has egg yolks in it for extra richness. Also, custards are made in ice cream machines with paddles that move slowly so minimal air is mixed in. Home ice cream makers work great for custard, and will churn out a thick, creamy finished product. 

Use my Shake Shack Frozen Vanilla Custard copycat recipe with the right ratio of cream to milk and just enough egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla to make an identical hack. It's great on its own or topped with syrups, fruit, and candy bits.

And don’t forget that custards taste best when they’re fresh. Shake Shack serves the custard within a couple of hours of making it, so consume your homemade Shake Shack vanilla custard as quickly as you can after it’s churned. 

If you're a fan of Shake Shack Vanilla Milkshake, you can duplicate it at home using this custard recipe as a base. Use my recipe here, and re-create the juicy Shake Shake Burger with my hack here.

Several puzzles had to be solved to make a satisfying hack of the signature sandwich from the rapidly expanding New York chain. First, our burger must include a spot-on facsimile of the secret ShackSauce. I got a sample of the sauce from one of our Las Vegas Shake Shacks and determined the seven common ingredients, including pickle juice, to combine for a great Shake Shack sauce recipe.

Second, the burger must be made with a special ground mix of four different cuts of beef and the patties need to be cooked the right way. I tested many combinations of meat until I landed on a flavorful blend of chuck, brisket, skirt steak, and short ribs. If you don't have a meat grinder at home, you can have your butcher grind these for you. At the restaurant, the ground beef blend is formed into ¼-pound pucks that are smashed onto the grill with a metal press. Grab a strong spatula and heat up a heavy skillet.

And third, you'll need some soft, buttered and toasted potato buns to hold it all together. Shake Shack uses Martin's rolls, which are not cut all the way through, allowing the buns to be hinged open for loading. If you can’t find Martin’s, any soft potato rolls will do.

Use my Shake Shack Shackburger recipe below, and soon you’ll be biting into a perfect re-creation of the famous cheeseburger that helped this chain grow from a single food cart in New York City to over 162 stores.

Source: Top Secret Recipes Unleashed by Todd Wilbur.

The Dubai chocolate bar was created by Sarah Hamouda, a British-Egyptian engineer living in Dubai, who conceived of the bars while pregnant in 2021. However, Sarah didn’t discover the right mix of sweetened pistachio paste, tahini, and shredded phyllo dough to fill the milk chocolate bar until 2023. Soon after the bars were perfected in 2024, a social media campaign on Instagram and TikTok went viral, transforming the Dubai chocolate bars into a worldwide sensation.

Noticing the trend, Shake Shack locations in the Middle East introduced this milkshake version of the candy bar in February 2025. The shake was so popular there that Shake Shack brought it to U.S. outlets for a limited run in the summer, where it received rave reviews. Before it disappeared, I snagged several of the shakes and stashed all but one in my freezer. That one went into my belly, and it was worth every calorie.

To make this shake, Shake Shack uses their famous custard as a base. For my Shake Shack Dubai Chocolate Pistachio Shake copycat recipe, you can either use my hack of the chain’s custard (here) or choose a good store-bought vanilla ice cream (such as Häagen-Dazs). You’ll add pistachio paste, which is easily found online, along with toasted, shredded phyllo dough called kataifi.

The most ingenious part of this recipe is the Magic Shell chocolate sauce that coats the inside of the plastic cup before you add the shake. When you squeeze the cup, the chocolate cracks into the frozen shake, recreating the experience of eating the famous chocolate bar. Use a clear 18-ounce plastic cup (like Solo) for the best re-creation of the original shake.

Try my recipe for the Shake Shack Burger here.