Blue Moon Smoothie

This recipe is inspired by the Blue Moon smoothie they serve at Mustard Seed Market & Cafe in my hometown of Akron.

Every weekend, we have an argument before our big Sunday breakfast - who gets to make the smoothie.
That’s not fair! He made it last week! It’s my turn! No, you made it last week! I get to do it now! Sigh. Who wants to make the eggs? Anyone? Anyone?

I’m surrounded by smoothie addicts, and they love our new (refurbished) Vitamix. Now, you don’t have to have a Vitamix, BlendTec or other high-powered blender to make smoothies; we made them for years with a collection of Osterizers and KitchenAids. But. Oh, my, the extra power in a Vitamix just makes smoothies easier. Now, I may be biased, becasue I am a Vitamix affiliate…but I’ve seen the kids dump entire bags of frozen fruit into the Vitamix, and the powerful motor breaks things up and keeps them moving. 1
Did I mention that I’m a Vitamix affiliate? And if you buy one through my links, I get a small commission? OK, I’m good with the FCC now.

Usually, our smoothies are free-form, empty out the freezer operations. The kids add most of a bag of frozen fruit, a frozen bannana or two (we freeze any that are too brown to eat, and save them for smoothies), some yogurt, and apple juice or simple syrup to keep things moving and sweeten up the smoothie. I sat down and measured everything, snatching it out of their hands before they could put it in the blender…and here’s what I came up with.

Recipe: Blue Moon Smoothie

Prep Time: 1 minute
Cook time: 1 minute

Equipment

Blender (I love my Vitamix)

Ingredients

10 ounces (2 cups) frozen blueberries
2 bananas, peeled, frozen
1 (5 ounce) container plain greek yogurt
1 ½ cups apple juice (plus more to keep the blender moving, if necessary)

Directions

1. Blend it all

Put everything in blender, start on low, and slowly increase the speed to the highest setting. (On my Vitamix, Variable 10.) Blend on high until the ingredients are smooth, about 1 minute. If the smoothie isn’t spinning and forming a vortex, add some more apple juice and break up the smoothie with your blender’s tamper. (If you don’t have a tamper, shut the blender off and use a spatula, then restart it.)

Notes

If you don’t have frozen blueberries, use whatever frozen fruit you have. I buy a variety of frozen fruit on sale at the grocery store, and the kids grab whatever takes their fancy on Sunday morning.
If you don’t have plain greek yogurt, substitute flavored yogurt. Blueberry is the obvious choice for this smoothie, but any flavor will work. Call it a blueberry-bannana-whatever flavor at that point.
The other nice feature of the Vitamix is the tamper. It fits in the hole in the lid, and reaches just above the blades. It is perfect for breaking up a smoothie that has separated into two layers - a blended layer on the bottom, and a frozen fruit layer on the top. A few pushes with the tamper and everything gets moving again. (If things don’t move after tamping, that’s a sign to add more liquid to the blender…)

What do you think?

Questions? Other ideas? Leave them in the comments section below.

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