Matcha Almond Smoothie Made With Almond breeze

I think I have shared the fact that we don't drink cow's milk on the blog before. I mean, we put a splash in our coffee and I bake with it and eat ice cream but to pouring a big glass of cold cow's milk is just never going to happen around here. Nobody is lactose intolerant or allergic, although I have been tempted to lie about that over the years. Back when people would get all up in my grill about not giving my toddler huge glasses of icy cold cow's milk because it was going to cause him to never grow, I wish I had a picture of my future 6' 15 year old to waggle in their faces. When The Kid was little, he would act like you were trying to kill him if you tried to give him a glass of milk. Because of this, we have depended on alternate forms of milk type drinks to make our morning smoothies, put on cereal etc and our favourite is almond milk.

Soy milk leaves a weird, greasy film in my mouth that I don't like and I just prefer that almondy taste of almond milk. So, I guess my chance to wear a milk mustache is a about zero percent and the soy milk people won't be knocking down my door, but I y'am what I y'am.

I accepted the challenge to come up with a recipe using Almond Breeze because we already drink it on the regular but I have never tried to cook with it and welcomed the opportunity to force myself to use it in a new way. To start with, I used the non sweetened version in a smoothie which was actually new to me. and I am currently trying out some actual recipes using this stuff.  I always use the vanilla but since the whole point is to find new ways to use this product, I made one of our favourite morning drinks using the unsweetened almond milk, half expecting to find that it wasn't going to be sweet enough. This drink is certainly not the prettiest smoothie that ever was, but it's delicious.

This is what it looks like with half the amount of matcha powder if you think your kids will rebel against the greyish blue

I am happy to report that I think I preferred the original over the vanilla. I like adding my own honey so that I know exactly how much sugar is in my drink and without the vanilla component, I could really taste the matcha, which I love. Clearly, this is not a pretty drink. The matcha and blueberries combine to make a lovely shade of grey but it tastes great and the matcha is good for you and tastes way better than something like Greens Plus so we have learned to embrace the grey. 

I was also given this Hamilton Beach Single Serve Blender to try out as well and it works just fine, even with the frozen fruit and for a unit that retails for less than $20, that was a concern but it had no trouble at all. Another plus is that you can just take it and go since the lid turns the blender container into a portable drink cup. That means less vessels to wash and that is always a good thing. A minus is that it only makes one drink at a time, so it's great for one or, maybe, two people but maybe not the right blender if you have more people to smoothie up in the morning.                                                    Now, if someone would just come up with an appliance to whip up single serve cheese omelets that you can just pick up and take out the door. A girl can dream.

This is clearly a sponsored post but, as you know, any opinion that come out of my fingers is absolutely my own.

Almond Matcha Smoothie

serves 2-3

2 cups original almond breeze

*1 frozen banana

1/3 cup frozen pineapple

1/3 cup frozen blueberries

1 heaping tbls matcha powder

2 tbls honey

*I freeze bananas whole, in the skin. The skin will turn dark in the freezer but the banana underneath is fine. Remove from the freezer and use a small knife to cut the skin away before chopping it into chunks


Throw all of the ingredients in a blender and puree on high until everything is completely smooth.