Making Smoothies (with surprisingly little mess!)

January 1, 2008 at 4:04 pm (food, Italy, life, recipes)

My sister bought me a book about smoothies and juices for Christmas and I must say I was a bit sceptical at first. I don’t have a juicer or a blender and didn’t know if I’d be able to make them with just a wand. However, yesterday with not much to do, I sat down and made a list of all the ingredients I would need to make the smoothies that I liked the sound of. I basically ended up with a huge list of fruit and after having trundled off to the local supermarket, I returned home with most of the goodies. In the end I made 4 different smoothies, each of which I tweaked and doubled the recipe, then poured the mixtures into little cups, which are now sitting in the freezer; so we can have smoothies every day for breakfast! Can’t wait!

I’m going to put the lists of ingredients below for my reference as much as for anybody else. If you want to make them, you basically peel and chop everything and wack it all in a blender. It’s up to you whether you sieve them or not, I try them first unsieved and if I just can’t bear all the bits, then I strain it. (note, you lose some of the fibre if you sieve it)

1. Brilliant Berries

• 230g mixed frozen/fresh berries
• 450ml milk
• 7 tablespoons natural yoghurt
• 1 tbsp honey

2. Exotic

• 2 large wedges pineapple
• 3/4 ripe mango
• 1/2 banana
• juice of 1/4 lemon

3. Strawberry goodness

• 250g strawberries
• 450 ml milk
• 6 tbsp yoghurt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

4. Peculiar Coloured Pear

• 1 large ripe pear
• 2 tbsp orange juice
• 75g frozen mixed berries
• 1 ripe kiwi

All the above recipes were inspired by recipes given in ‘Juices ad Smoothies’ – Igloo.