Recipe Round-Up: Blissful Basil (Smoothie edition)

We'll be spending the next few recipe round-ups with the lovely book Blissful Basil by Ashley Melillo. I've posted about this book a few times before. It is a very lovely book, and I love the inventive recipes within. It also is wonderful for lots of fresh, colourful, and healthy recipes. Not surprisingly, it has a whole chapter on smoothies, and I am going to be rounding up a lot of them in this post. So I hope you like photos of drinks in glasses!

Energising Carrot Cake Smoothie: This is very strong of the lovely spices used in the smoothie, not so much of the carrot itself, but spices are pretty important in a carrot cake. Even though it is only sweetened with one medjool date, I found it a little bit sweet for me. I would also add a bit less vanilla extract next time, as it overpowered the flavours a little.
Rating: :)



Zippy Pineapple and Fennel "Juice": I don't have a juicer, but have done juicing in the blender before, though I cannot be bothered straining it most of the time. Anyway, I turned this into a smoothie by using the bender, not straining, and adding some coconut water to make it extra refreshing. And refreshing this is! Cucumber, pineapple (I used frozen to thicken up the smoothie), fennel, and coriander - it is quite a lovely and different experience. It also called for jalapeno, but I left that out.
Rating: :)



Double-Chocolate Hazelnut Smoothie: From the fresh and green to the dark and decadent, this smoothie was also meant to have Espresso in the title but I left out the coffee because ewwww. It has frozen bananas as the base, and then cacao powder and toasted hazelnuts, which give it a subtle Nutella flavour. It uses 3-4 dates for sweetness, but I only used one because I find dates just so sweet, and that was enough for me.
Rating: :)



Original Almond Butter Maca Madness Smoothie: This smoothie has three versions, as you will see, and this is the original one. I love how maca gives kind of an earthy caramel flavour to smoothies. Even with two frozen bananas in it, I didn't find this very filling, but it is nice for a sweet afternoon drink.
Rating: :)



Cacao Crunch Peanut Butter Maca Madness Smoothie: This is a variation on the above, though I used peanut butter instead of almond buutter. This is the same base but has raw cacao powder and nibs added.
Rating: :)



Vanilla Chai Spice Almond Butter Maca Madness Smoothie: This takes the base smoothie and adds a lovely blend of spices, which give it a nice and subtle chai flavour.
Rating: :)



Sunshiny Citrus Smoothie: This is a lovely blend of mango, banana, orange, grapefruit, and lime. As well as using frozen bananas, I also used frozen mangoes, which meant that it cam eout extremely thick! Even with adding a little bit of extra water. The recipe calls for fresh mangoes. It was too thick to easily drink from a glass, but it was perfect for a smoothie bowl! I added some pepitas, slivered almonds,and dried cranberries to the top for fun. The recipe also calls for optional baobab powder, but I haven't heard of that before let alone have any so I left it out.
Rating: :)



Hello World Green Smoothie: Of course, you cannot have a smoothie chapter without at least one green smoothie! This was thick and refreshing, with frozen banana, baby spinach, frozen pineapple, fennel, and fresh ginger. I couldn't really taste the fennel in this one.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Could I interest you in a basket of kittens? These two are some of our adoption kitties.