Pinstripe Alley vs. Yankee Stadium Food: Grand Slam Celebration Shake

One of my favorite parts of every offseason is when the Yankees announce their new food offerings at the stadium. I don’t make it to the stadium as often as I’d like, but I still go anywhere from 5-10 times a year and I like to indulge in the new creations. I understand that the prices are ridiculous, but for a few times a year, I’m going to go all-in.

This offseason, when the Yankees announced the items, I had mixed emotions. When I heard about the Tater Keg and the Adobo Baos, my immediate reaction was “I need this in my life.” When I tried them, they lived up to their billing. Then I heard about what brings us here today: the Grand Slam Shakes.

The Grand Slam Shakes are the definition of extra. There are four different types, but the one I was most intrigued by was the Celebration Shake, and that’s the one I tried. Listeners of the Pinstripe Alley Podcast will know that I had quite a few questions involving this shake, particularly around the cupcakes that were part of this monstrosity (I think I mostly mean that in a good way).

The Celebration Shake is a vanilla shake with birthday cake frosting and funfetti vanilla cupcakes. I can see why it’s called a “Celebration Shake,” as it’s essentially a birthday cake fused together in the form of a milkshake. The questions I had for this shake essentially revolved around the cupcakes.

How are the cupcakes supposed to be consumed? Was I supposed to eat the cupcakes first? If that’s the case, why are they in the shake to begin with? Now the wrapper is all covered in whipped cream and milkshake and now I’m getting my hands dirty. Or am I supposed to wait until I finish the milkshake and then fish the cupcakes out, in which case now my milkshake gets a fun wrapper taste? Or do I take the wrapper off? Why don’t these cupcakes come with instructions?

So I did what any person would normally do*. I tried both ways. I took one cupcake right off the top, took the wrapper off and ate it. It was delicious. The other? Since I didn’t want wrapper flavor to consume my milkshake, I took the wrapper off and then just placed it back on top of the milkshake. Now the cupcake soaked up some of the milkshake. Genius, right? I know.

The milkshake itself was delicious. If you think vanilla is too plain, then this isn’t the shake for you, but if you can appreciate a good vanilla shake, that’s exactly what you’re getting here. The sprinkles from the birthday cake frosting made for a nice touch and gave the frosting some life.

You’ll notice in the picture of the shake above, there’s some weird substance on the outer rim of the glass. I have absolutely no idea what this was or what I was supposed to do with it. So naturally, I tried it. I took a spoon, ate it, and it was quite bland. It had no flavor, except for the sprinkles. It was just kind of there for decoration? I assume it was edible. Maybe it wasn’t. Who knows? It didn’t really do anything except make for a messier glass, so congrats on that achievement?

Once I finished the milkshake, I still had the second cupcake left to overcome. Considering I was out in public at a baseball game and not in my living room on my sofa, I decided I should be an adult and use a spoon or fork to fish out the cupcake instead of going all in like I was trying to reach the last few chips in a Pringles can. Last thing I wanted was to George Costanza myself.

So I had this second cupcake and well, it’s exactly how you would expect a cupcake that had been sitting in a milkshake to be. It was soggy and the milkshake flavor overpowered the cupcake. Good thing that the milkshake was also good, so I didn’t hate what was happening, it just came back to not making any sense.

The items individually were very good, but I just couldn’t get past the fact that the cupcakes just made no sense. I had no idea what to do with it, or why it was there in the first place. If I ever get this shake again (which I would do if I were in a milkshake mood), I’d definitely just eat both cupcakes first and then just enjoy the milkshake separately.

The Grand Slam Shakes are only available in the Pepsi Food Court in section 125, and cost $14.99 plus tax.

*I have no idea what people normally would do.