Gypsy Rose Blanchard makes a ‘prison-style energy drink’ in viral TikTok

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Gypsy Rose Blanchard is giving a peek into her former life on the inside.

Blanchard, 32, was released from prison and granted parole in December after serving 7 years of a 10-year sentence for her role in the plot to kill her mother Claudine “Dee Dee” Blanchard.

On Saturday, she posted a tutorial in response to one of her 9.8 million TikTok followers asking if she could make videos of prison hacks. In the video, Blanchard shows viewers how to make an “energy drink” she made as an inmate using pre-packaged, readily available ingredients.

“So, I’m about to show you how to make a prison-style energy drink with only four ingredients,” Blanchard says at the start of the video. “I want to disclose that this is a non-alcoholic drink, so, I don’t promote alcohol on my channel.”

Blanchard then shows off the ingredients: a bag of Jolly Rancher candy, Kool-Aid Tropical Punch singles, a strawberry-flavored Fanta and Folgers instant coffee.

First, she crushes up the Jolly Ranchers, calling the move “kind of important” before continuing on to preparing the coffee.

“You want to get about like a nice heaping scoop,” she says, spooning her portion out of the container. “You want to have a cup on the side with a little water in it. That way you could dissolve the instant coffee.”

Placing the combined coffee into a mixing bowl, Blanchard explains why the drink exists.

“Everyone in prison usually makes these drinks because nobody gets Red Bull in prison,” Blanchard says. “This is just something that we made to have, like, a homemade Red Bull.”

She then mixes a Kool-Aid packet into the bowl with the coffee.

Blanchard uses the Tropical Punch variety because “any other flavor would actually just taste really disgusting,” she says, grabbing a bottle of soda for the next step. “You want to use a strawberry Fanta, because the whole point is to make it kind of juicy flavored, like very fruity.”

Blanchard warns that the soda will foam up, which is normal. After telling viewers to “give it a good mix,” she instructs them to add the crushed candy. “This is just for more fruity flavor,” she says.

With the mixture complete, Blanchard moves to presentation.

“You will want to serve it in a cup of ice. Do not try to drink this warm — that would be absolutely disgusting,” she says, before acknowledging the visual of the finished drink. “I know what you’re thinking, ‘This looks so gross,’ right? But, I didn’t like it at first but then they grew on me.”

Giving the drink a final stir near the end of the video, Blanchard pours the bubbly beverage into a cup and tells viewers to “enjoy” before taking a sip herself.

“Mmm, that’s pretty good,” she says.

Blanchard shared an anecdote about how potent the energy drink is, telling a “funny story” from her time behind bars. She said a “roommate” came back to their shared space to find Blanchard on her hands and knees cleaning the walls with a toothbrush.

“And she’s like, ‘Oh, there Gypsy goes on the racks again,’ because that’s what we call it in prison. We call this drink the rack. I don’t know why it’s called that,” Blanchard says, adding that she still enjoys and drinks the concoction — even though she has access to In-N-Out these days.

The Prison Journalism Project, which has a glossary of prison jargon, defines a “rack” as a “combination of a caffeinated beverage such as soda, coffee or tea mixed with an enormous amount of sugar that is boiled down.”

Blanchard’s look into prison recipes has gone viral, garnering more than 26 million views in three days. She tells her viewers to try the recipe if they’re “brave enough,” and others on the app jumped at the chance to try it.

“Honestly it’s not horrible,” says TikToker Jackson Strike in a video with over 795,000 views, adding it reminds him of a dirty soda with strong notes of strawberry. “Then there’s kind of like a grit, almost as if it’s like a natural wine or like there’s like beets in it. Yeah, I could see drinking this.”

“It’s not bad. It’s obviously not the best drink I’ve ever had, but it’s better than what I expected,” TikToker Kristina Dmytrenko says in a video with over 590,400 views. “I mean, if I was in prison, I could definitely tear this up.”

Blanchard is set to give viewers an inside look at her post-prison life in her upcoming documentary series “Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up” premiering June 3 on Lifetime.