As promised, I’m getting you pumped about pumpkin. The first fabulous recipe is a great way to start your day. I love making smoothies for breakfast, but they can get boring after a while. And as it gets cooler outside, it’s harder to get excited about strawberry-banana or other summery concoction. So…enter the humble pumpkin!
There are a lot of ways you can make a pumpkin smoothie, but here’s how I did it.
Ingredients
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
one scoop vanilla protein powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon, plus more to taste
1/2 cup plain, fat-free yogurt
1/2 cup water
generous sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice
5 ice cubes
Put all ingredients in your Magic Bullet or blender.
Whir until blended. Pour into a glass and sprinkle with cinnamon.
Allllll done! A lovely orange way to start your day!
With this recipe, the smoothie has about 150 calories. I kept it low because I wanted to have it as “part of a complete breakfast.” (I had it with a whole wheat English muffin topped with peanut butter–pretty much a fall foodgasm.) If you want to make it into a toast-free power breakfast, adjust accordingly: 1/2 cup pumpkin, 1 scoop vanilla protein powder, 1 cup milk/yogurt/soy milk (and skip the water), and 1 tablespoon nut butter or Nutella.
The smoothie was a lot milder than I expected–the pumpkin flavor isn’t overpowering. I found that I wanted a lot of cinnamon in it to make it more savory. But if you like things sweet, you could experiment with a little sugar, vanilla extract, or honey.
And I haven’t added coffee to the mix yet, but I think that’s the next step!
Something else I decided to try: scooping out individual servings of canned pumpkin and freezing them in my smallest Tupperware containers.
Frozen pumpkin blobs…kind of like fronanas! I just prefer to use frozen fruits in smoothies because I think they give way better consistency than ice does. These little containers are so great. If you do this, you might want to put them in the microwave for 20 seconds before you put in the blender. Mine were hard as rocks, but after 20 seconds, they were still frozen, but with a little bit of slush. (The microwave was a lot easier than my first method of banging on them with a mallet.)
However you decide to experiment with it, this breakfast is easier than a sorority girl on a hayride date party! Go make it now!!
Have a great Thursday!
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This looks great; I’ll have to try it. Thanks!