I started making this smoothie after we had something similar at great coffee house (Deep Creek Coffee Company) we visited during our trip in Southern Utah. If there’s one thing I crave more than anything else while traveling, it’s fresh fruits and veggies (which always seem to be scarce)! Luckily for us, this particular coffee house offered some really great freshly made smoothies. We ordered their Einstein Smoothie which they made with berries, spinach, and Greek yogurt. I loved that they called it the Einstein Smoothie because it’s packed with all sorts of goodness to start your day off on the right foot. You’ve got a serving of greens you don’t even know you’re drinking because it tastes berry deliciousness. It’s packed with antioxidents from the berries, and if you can have dairy, the Greek yogurt gives it lots of protein. It’s a really addicting combination because the first thing I did when we came home was to start making it for ourselves.
You can definitely make this with coconut milk or coconut yogurt if you can’t have dairy. But if you can have dairy… let’s talk about Greek yogurt for a minute. Greek yogurt is most wonderfully creamy, and it’s the only yogurt I can eat by the spoonful, plain with no added sweetener (it’s that good). Until recently, we didn’t have very many options available here in our small town, and most of them were thickened with things like guar gum. A true Greek yogurt is drained to create it’s thick creamy texture, not thickened with extra ingredients. I’ve been using the Wallaby brand (full fat) which has a whopping 19 grams of protein per cup! While true Greek yogurt is a little bit more expensive because it’s costlier to make, it’s more than worth the extra money. Plus when you add it to your green smoothies, it becomes a well rounded breakfast with the high protein content.
When layering the ingredients for a green smoothie into the blender, it’s best to start with the easiest to blend ingredients, and finish up with the greens on the top. For this smoothie, I start with the yogurt and coconut water before adding in the berries and finally the greens. If you don’t have high powered blender, another thing you can do is blend the greens with the liquid in a smoothie recipe before adding anything else to the blender.
While this smoothie is all kinds of amazing, it’s not a very good keeper. I’ve tried making it the night before and then drinking it for breakfast, and there’s no doubt it looses a lot of it’s magic. There’s something about any smoothie with banana in it that never tastes as good 8 hours later. Fortunately it’s really easy to make, (10 minutes tops) especially if you’re using frozen berries. 5 from 1 review 5 from 1 review
