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.
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
- Blend all ingredients in Vitamix until smooth.
- 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
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.
I’ve broken blender blades on bananas! Would you suggest a few ice cubes and non-frozen bananas or freeze the mixture a few minutes if we don’t have a Vitamin?
Ice cubes would work but would dilute the rich flavor and creamy texture a bit. I’d probably let the frozen bananas thaw slightly, blend with a little extra soymilk, and then freeze or use non-frozen bananas and then freeze like you mentioned. It freezes really well and becomes more scoopable like ice cream.
I made these yesterday and they are really good. I used cocoa as I did not have carob. My smoothie did not have the rich dark color that yours does in the photo. Does Carol give it a darker color? Or did I read the recipe incorrectly? Since you used a lower case ‘t’ I used a teaspoon of cocoa and a teaspoon of honey. I used a tablespoon of Peanut butter since you used a upper case ‘T’. Thank you for the help and the recipe!
Hi Candace! Yes, you are correct that it was teaspoons for carob and honey and tablespoons for peanut butter. Hmmmm….I’m not sure if it was due to the cocoa instead of carob or ripeness of the bananas. Sometimes ripe brown bananas make smoothies darker. If you want, you could always increase the cocoa. It would be more chocolately but you could also increase the peanut butter if you want to keep the balance of flavors. Glad you enjoyed the recipe!
This smoothie looks so good, I’ll be making this soon!
Hope you like it! 🙂