When the fall arrives, you will probably want to have more recipes with pumpkin, but also eat healthier. One good option is to combine the two and have a healthy pumpkin pie smoothie. This includes a seasonal flavor of pumpkin and seasonings, while you can use the smoothie as a meal replacement, snack, or even healthy and low-fat dessert. Here are some tips for making a pumpkin pie smoothie.
Decide On Your Smoothie Base
To start with, the smoothie base is going to be similar to any other smoothie you make. If you are adding ice, you can use fresh and ripe bananas. However, if you don’t want to add ice to the smoothie, go ahead and use frozen bananas instead.
You then want to choose your main dairy components, including milk and yogurt. If you are a vegan, you can go with a yogurt substitute and use almond or soy milk instead of regular milk.
Greek yogurt is a good option for a pumpkin pie smoothie since it is healthy and adds a nice vanilla flavor. Sweeten it up with either maple syrup or honey.
Add in the Pumpkin and Spices
Once you have your basic smoothie base, you then want to add in your pumpkin and other seasonings. For a pumpkin pie smoothie, it is highly recommended that you make your own fresh pumpkin puree. You can do this by first roasting your pumpkin to soften it up, then cut it into pieces and put it in a food processor to make a puree. If you can’t do this, you can also used canned pumpkin.
For the spices, just using pumpkin pie spice should be good enough, but you might also want to add some ground cinnamon as well. Vanilla extract is often added for another bit of flavoring for a nice pumpkin pie smoothie.
Follow Standard Smoothie Directions
For a pumpkin pie smoothie, try to use a high quality blender. This will help you to really break up those ingredients without any fuss. Getting your proportions right for a pumpkin pie smoothie is really important. You should add the thicker ingredients to the bottom of the blender and end with your liquid ingredients.
Blend until smooth, adding more liquid as needed to get the blender to pulsate properly. You might also want to give it a taste before you pour it into glasses so you know if another sweetener or more pumpkin pie seasoning and cinnamon is needed.
