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The sun is back – can I have a hallelujah? My kids are typically Irish in the sense that the second there is a sliver of sunlight, they strip off into shorts and tshirts (ignoring the goosebumps and lack of circulation in their fingers) and call for ice-cream. Now, I do love a good ice-cream, but I also believe that an apple a day keeps the Doctor away and an ice-cream a day gives you diabetes! Harsh??? Maybe it is, but I also happen to think that we are, as a nation, killing our kids by overfeeding them.
So, enough of the giving out, I want to let you in on an exciting discovery I made. I was making smoothies the other day and when I pulled out the packet of frozen berries, there were only a few in the bottom. All I could do was make the tiniest smoothie and give each of the 3 children an egg cup and call them smoothie shots (not so great parenting there….eh???). I had just poured the mix into tumblers when the other half arrived home with a massive tray of fresh mangoes sent from a Pakistani colleague at work. The way to my heart is definitely through my stomach, so I’m officially in love…but thats another story. 
Anyway, we used the mangoes for the second layer of the smoothie and the kids were thrilled by the two tone mix. So a thought came to me – What if we had a guessing game of flavours? 2 of my 3 minions are super smellers. The youngest two could smell a strawberry in your pocket and would tell you if there were hints of grass in the sauvingnon I was drinking with dinner. The experiment occurred today – and it worked first time!
So we got our berries, our mangoes, bananas, vanilla extract, Liberte vanilla greek yoghurt and (for tummy health) Mindlinx probiotics from Biocare. I split them all into colours and we got to work.
It took a few minutes and it did get a little messy but the result was amazing. The trick with this is to use LOTS of crushed ice and we used NO juice so we kept the sugar content to a low. I always involve at least one of the kids in the making of these as it really fosters a sense of ‘secret’ and ‘excitement’ because they are in on the secret as to what flavours are used.
Each layer had 2 tablespoons of Liberte, a dash of vanilla extract and a scoop of mango (the mango was really juicy so that negated the need for juice) – we also used a really healthy dose of crushed ice. The more ice, the stiffer the mix and the easier it is to create layers. The flavours we used today were as follows:
- Mango with a tablespoon of rolled oats
- Strawberries and 1/2 banana
- Rasberries and red currants
- Blackberries and mango
And there we are – just enough brain freeze to make you imagine you are eating an ice-cream and enough of the yoghurt vanilla creaminess to make you feel you aren’t missing out. First they tasted each of the layers by pulling the straw shallower and shallower in the jar. Then they closed their eyes and tried to guess which level they were on.
That filled all of 30 minutes after dinner and they stopped asking for ice-cream until their brains thawed out.
Next time I experiment, Ill be trying some kiwi and spinach to see where I get. Perhaps you could try it with vanilla protein powder layered with chocolate …..just a thought.
Until next time xxx