Peanut Butter Carob Banana Smoothie
Summer’s coming! Along with all the wonderful sunshine, days in the pool and sprinklers, vacations, and gardening comes the not-so-pleasant sweltering heat. Back when Al and I lived in Southern California, on hot summer days we would drop by Jamba Juice for a nice, cold, refreshing smoothie. Now, we live in hot, humid TN and instead of Jamba Juice, we’ve found something even better.

Enter the oh-so-delicious, oh-so-cheap, oh-so-easy, guilt-free peanut butter carob banana smoothie.

Cold, refreshing, silky smooth, healthy, and crumb-savingly inexpensive and simple to make! It’s a quick breakfast shake for bachelors, a healthy ice cream “milkshake” for kids, and a cool summer treat for any crumb saver who’s avoiding their A/C.

I started making these last summer and we couldn’t help but eat them all summer long. Over the winter we’ve been stocking our freezer with overripe bananas in anticipation of this summer, and we just slurped up our first peanut butter carob banana smoothie yesterday. So in anticipation of some upcoming hot weather, we thought we’d share this bliss of frozen yumminess with you.

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

Total Time: 10 minutes

Yield: 2 servings

Serving Size: Approx 8 oz

Ingredients

  • 3 large frozen bananas
  • 1/2 c soy or almond milk
  • 1 T natural peanut butter
  • 1 t carob powder
  • 1 t honey

Instructions

  1. Blend all ingredients in Vitamix until smooth.
  2. Serve immediately or store in freezer until serving.

Notes

If you don’t have a Vitamix, you may need to add more milk for blending (if it comes out more runny like a milkshake than ice cream, just pop it in the freezer for 15-20 minutes to firm it up)

Break overripe bananas into half before freezing to make it easier to blend and quick to measure

Adjust any of these ingredients to make it more or less sweet, banana-y, peanut buttery, or carob-y

Sub carob with cocoa powder, peanut with almond butter, or honey with sweetener of your choice

For a little twist, try adding Roma for a mocha flavor, mint extract for a bit of freshness, or topped with homemade granola for a crunch

https://savingthecrumbs.com/peanut-butter-carob-banana-smoothie/

Costs

So how much does it cost to make this smoothie compared to just buying one at Jamba Juice? Let’s take a look.

Bananas* $0.24
Soymilk $0.14
Peanut butter $0.04
Carob** $0.03
Honey $0.05
TOTAL $0.50
Cost/serving $0.25

*Buy on sale at Aldi for $0.29/lb or overripe ones discounted at the grocery store

**A healthy alternative to chocolate that you can find at health food stores or on Amazon

For a small (16 oz) classic Jamba Juice smoothie, you’ll pay about $4.50. Compare that to $0.50 and I’ll take nine batches of our homemade smoothie to one Jamba Juice any day, thank you.