Copycat Dairy Queen Blizzard (M&M or Oreo)
Cool, creamy, flavorful and thick enough to hold upside down, the Dairy Queen Blizzard is a special ice cream treat. Even better, it’s easy to make at home!
Recently, my blogging friends all decided to make copycat recipes–and I was perplexed. You see, I almost never eat at chain restaurants, so what could I make? Then I thought of Dairy Queen. Stopping there is my favorite reward for a day running errands. Plus, summer is coming!
Now when it comes to Dairy Queen, the M&M Blizzard is my first love. Thick, chocolatey and loaded with crunchy M&M pieces, I am rarely tempted to try anything else. Second on my list is the Oreo Blizzard, smooth and creamy with a perfect cookies and cream blend. Just in case I’m getting in a food rut…
Of course, I did have to sample both of these again as research. Blogging can be tough!
What is a Blizzard?
I’d describe the blizzard as a frozen milkshake that is blended with candy, brownies or other flavorings to create a kind of hybrid frozen treat.
But for a professional opinion, Wikipedia describes the Dairy Queen Blizzard as “soft-serve mechanically blended with mix-in ingredients such as sundae toppings and/or pieces of cookies, brownies, or candy. It has been a staple on the menu since its introduction in 1985…”
Now doesn’t that sound like something you’d like to try!
Why You’ll Love This!
Tasty & Refreshing. A blizzard is cool, sweet and chocolatey. Think hot summer day. Nuf said?
Convenient. A homemade blizzard is quick and easy! DQ is a 30 minute trip (for me).
Fun. Who would agree with me that spooning up thick ice cream and biting into crunchy M&M bits is a little more fun than eating a popsicle?
What You’ll Need
Ingredients
- Reduced Fat Ice Cream or Frozen Whole Milk Yogurt. Did you know that the Diary Queen Blizzard is made using their soft serve which is 5% milkfat? You can use other types of ice cream but something lower in fat will best duplicate the original.
- Milk. A very small amount of milk is used to thin the ice cream enough to blend.
- Add-ins, varying by flavor. The M&M blizzard uses M&Ms and chocolate syrup, the Oreo uses Oreo cookies.
Special Tools
- A good blender is used to mix the blizzard and ensure it stays thick. You could fully hand blend but that would be a lot more work.
How to Make Blizzards at Home
Crush your M&Ms, Oreos or other add-in pieces (see tips below).
Blend the ice cream (and chocolate syrup if making an M&M blizzard) in a good blender until just smooth. If it’s too hard (which is likely), stir a couple turns by hand then add 1/2 Tablespoon of milk and blend again, repeating until it is just soft enough to blend together. Process until just smooth.
Add the crushed add-ins and pulse once or twice to blend or stir them in by hand.
Spoon into serving glass and serve immediately.
How to Serve
Serve a blizzard with a spoon! Any frozen drink that stays in the glass when you turn it upside down isn’t going to work with just a straw!
A blizzard is great for dessert after a light meal! It’s also a perfect refreshing snack on a hot summer day!
Variations
Blizzards come in many different flavors, from year-round options to seasonal specials. You can find a list of blizzard flavors on the DQ site.
But you don’t need to stick to their list. If you have a favorite flavor or candy you’d like to add in, go for it. Remember this is fun!
Tips & FAQs
Measuring the ice cream. Because different ice creams have varying amounts of air (see my Old-Fashioned Chocolate Malt post for more detail), which dramatically reduces out after blending, it’s a challenge to produce an accurate recipe by volume. I ended up weighing out 8 ounces which looked like the picture below.
Softening the ice cream. I had read suggestions about leaving the ice cream in the refrigerator to soften to avoid diluting it with milk. This worked when I tried it though it took some time.
But given that whole milk is 4% milkfat and Dairy Queen soft serve is 5%, adding just a little milk isn’t going to dilute it. Be sure to add it a little at a time (as the instructions say) to keep your blizzard nice and thick.
Break up your “add-ins” before blending. I tried chunking up my M&Ms in the blender, first without the ice cream and then with it. I rejected this option since it resulted in very uneven sized pieces as well as over-blending in the final drink. So I decided to blend the ice cream first, then add hand-crushed candy/cookies.
To crush, I first tried putting the M&Ms in a plastic bag and hitting with an ice cream scoop. Unfortunately the bag started to break up—and I didn’t want to eat bits of plastic! So I ended up crushing them inside a folded paper towel which worked much better!
The Oreos broke up so easily that I ended up doing them by hand. Once crushed everything was very easy to incorporate into the pre-blended ice cream.
The Inside Scoop. I talked to a Dairy Queen employee who said they get the M&Ms pre-crushed. He thought they might be “factory seconds” but I’m guessing that Dairy Queen uses way more crushed M&Ms than the Mars factory has seconds of!
Some people omit the chocolate syrup in their M&M blizzard recipes. And while it seemed pretty obvious to me that the original contained chocolate syrup, I went to their website to confirm. The official M&M blizzard has three ingredients: artificially flavored vanilla reduced fat ice cream, M&Ms milk chocolate candies, artificially flavored chocolate syrup.
Yes, just plain yum!
Copycat Recipes
- Cheesecake Factory Sweet Corn Tamale Cakes from Jen Around the World
- Copycat Crumble Sugar Cookie Recipe from Kathryn’s Kitchen Blog
- Copycat Panda Express Chow Mein from Palatable Pastime
- Copycat Wingers Sticky Chicken Fingers from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
- Homemade Blizzards from Art of Natural Living
- Lighter Chicken Bellagio (The Cheesecake Factory Copycat) from The Spiffy Cookie
- Longhorn Parmesan Crusted Chicken from Cheese Curd In Paradise
- Olive Garden Salad Dressing from Family Around the Table
- Passion Tea Lemonade from That Recipe
- Strawberry Poppyseed Salad from Magical Ingredients
- Truffle Smashburger from A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
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Dairy Queen Blizzard
Ingredients
- 8 ounces reduced fat ice cream or frozen whole milk yogurt, about 4 scoops or 1 1/2 cups
- 1 Tablespoon milk or as needed
Add-ins:
- For M&M blizzard 1 Tablespoon chocolate syrup and 3 Tablespoons crushed M&Ms
- For Oreo blizzard 4 Oreo cookies, crushed.
Instructions
- Crush your M&Ms, oreos or other add-in pieces.
- Blend the ice cream (and chocolate syrup if making an M&M blizzard) in a good blender until just smooth. If it’s too solid (which is likely), stir a couple turns by hand, then add 1/2 Tablespoon of milk and blend again, repeating until it is just soft enough to blend. Process until just smooth.
- Add the crushed add-ins and pulse once or twice to blend or stir them in by hand.
- Spoon into serving glass and serve immediately.
My kids love the oreo blizzard and they try to make often at home. I will share this recipe to make the exact version! Delicious!
My boys love oreo and m&m in their ice cream treats! I am partial to m&m too!
One of my favorite treats! This is even better than the kind from Dairy Queen. These blizzards are always a favorite dessert in my house!
The Oreo blizzard has always been my favorite. This looks fantastic and I cannot wait to make this for my family.
I’ve never tried a blizzard before. One of the fast food chains do them here but I’d much rather try your version and know what goes into it.
Your version sounds much better, cheaper, and healthier than their artificial version!
I love the new cherry chip blizzard. Do you have a recipe for that
Sorry I don’t. Fun flavor!