mango pineapple smoothie

Icy cold fruit smoothies make a great summer treat (even if they do sometimes cause brain freeze).  These smoothies are easy to make, healthy, tasty frozen treats that don’t need any ice cubes.  They can be thick, thin, or even taste like a milkshake.  All you need is frozen fruit and yogurt, some liquid and a blender.   My favorite is a mango pineapple fruit smoothie, with the banana chocolate milkshake style smoothie a close second.

pineapple, mango, and yogurt in magic bullet blender cup

fill to desired level with fruit juice and blend

Smoothie Ingredients

Frozen Fruit – any kind of fruit or berries frozen into pieces small enough for the blender to handle

use a pan lined with parchment paper or an ice cube tray to make frozen vanilla yogurt blobs or cubes for smoothie-making

Regular yogurt frozen into blobs or cubes of blender friendly size (coconut milk yogurt works fine for anyone with dairy issues.)  I prefer vanilla, but plain regular yogurt would work too.  Greek yogurt gives the smoothie an odd texture, so I don’t use it.  The frozen yogurt in the ice cream section at the grocery store is too much like ice cream for making smoothies.  You can use it, but then they’d be milkshakes instead of smoothies.

Liquid – fruit juice, milk (dairy or plant based,) or a combination thereof.  Some water can be added as well in some smoothies.

Frozen blueberries, strawberries, watermelon and yogurt, with apple juice ready to blend.  This one needed a bit more liquid added.

Fruit Smoothie Instructions

berry smoothie

Exact quantities are not important for these smoothies.  If the blender has issues add more liquid, and if the smoothie comes out too thin add more fruit or yogurt.  Put fruit chunks, yogurt blobs, and liquid into the blender and blend it.  That’s all there is to it, very easy to make.

Fruit style smoothie:  Mango Pineapple – For my favorite mango pineapple smoothie I use nearly equal amounts of mango and pineapple and just a couple yogurt blobs.  I pile it all in the blender until they reach the height of the finished quantity I want and then pour the liquid in until it reaches the desired mark.  I usually end up adding a bit more liquid than I start out with to make things easier on the blender.  This one works out well with either mango or pineapple juice.  A combination of the two works fine too, as does using mostly juice and a bit of either cold water or milk or both.  I’ve also used orange juice for about half the juice and it tasted great that way too.   Replacing some of the juice with water cuts down on the calories when using a sweetened juice.

For any other sort of fruit smoothie just replace the mango and pineapple with the fruit(s) or berries of your choice and use a juice that goes well with them.

Berry smoothies can sometimes come out a bit tart depending on the type of berries and juice used to make them.  Adding a bit of frozen watermelon and using a sweeter juice such as apple juice makes a great way to sweeten up a berry or any other tart smoothie without added sweetener.

chocolate “milkshake” smoothie

Milkshake style smoothie – For a milkshake-like smoothie, use milk as the only liquid, extra yogurt (2-3 times as much as for a regular smoothie) and bananas as the base fruit.  I slice the bananas and then freeze the slices individually on a pan lined with parchment paper before putting them in a ziplock bag in the freezer.  I do that with all the fruits that I freeze as well as the yogurt so that each piece is separate and you can easily take as much or as little as you want out of the bag at any given time without worries of then all sticking together in a clump.

For a chocolate banana smoothie use bananas as the only fruit and add some chocolate ice cream sauce before blending.  For a fruit flavored milkshake smoothie, use partly bananas and partly fruit of the flavor you want such as strawberries, still with extra yogurt and milk as the only liquid.

frozen bananas, yogurt, and strawberries – add milk and blend

strawberry milkshake smoothie

copyright My Cruise Stories 2014