CHOCOLATE AVOCADO SMOOTHIE

With just five ingredients, this Chocolate Avocado Smoothie is convenient and fast to whip up on busy mornings. Avocado adds a smooth creaminess, without actually tasting like avocado. It’s great for a variety of diets, including keto, low carb, paleo, and vegan.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups unsweetened vanilla nut milk
• 1/4 small ripe avocado
• 3 tablespoons confectioners swerve sweetener
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
• <1/8 teaspoon table salt
• optional ice cubes, blended last

Instructions

1-Blend: Blend all ingredients except for ice cubes in high-speed blender until very smooth.

2-Taste & Adjust: Taste and adjust flavors accordingly. For thicker version, blend in extra avocado and cocoa powder. To thin, blend in extra nut milk. Optionally, chill the drink by blending in ice cubes.

3-Serve: Enjoy immediately.

NOTES & TIPS

(1) Nut Milk. I use cashew milk, but other nut milks like almond milk can be used. Find them in the refrigerated fresh milk section of a grocery store. To determine if your nut milk is unsweetened, look at the carton’s nutrition facts, which should only have 1 gram of total carbs per 1 cup serving. Anything more than that, and it’s likely sweetened with a lot of added sugars (meaning it’s not low carb) and your smoothie will end up too sweet.

(2) Avocado Measurement. After peeling and pitting, 1/4 of a small avocado amounts to 1 ounce weight. If your avocado is on the larger side or you’re not sure about its size, then start off by blending in 2 tablespoons of avocado, which corresponds to 1 ounce weight. It’s always easy to add more after tasting the smoothie. A ripe avocado is best because it combines more easily with other ingredients.

(3) Why Avocado? Avocado contributes a smooth creaminess to this drink and increases its fat proportion (great for anyone on a keto diet), without actually tasting like avocado. Personally, I can’t taste it in the final blended drink; the most prominent taste is chocolate. This is great for anyone who wants to incorporate more avocado into their diet, but doesn’t like the taste.

(4) Sweetener. Confectioners Swerve is a dry erythritol blend that measures the same as regular powdered sugar. You can substitute your preferred dry or liquid sweetener by adding it to taste by blending in small amounts at a time.

(5) Cocoa Powder. I use Hersheys Special Dark.

(6) Blending. Ice cubes are blended last because the ingredients may not smoothly combine when they’re very cold. I use a Nutribullet personal blender.

(7) Serving. This smoothie is best enjoyed immediately. Serving more than one? You can scale up the recipe. Just increase the ingredient amounts proportionally — you can double, triple, or quadruple the ingredients to make more smoothies. Blend everything together, and portion them off into individual cups.

(8) Nutrition. The nutrition calculation assumes you are using Swerve or similar erythritol-based sweetener that uses sugar alcohols, whose carbs are non-impact and not included in the nutrition estimate.

NUTRITION

Did you make this? Tell us about it!