A beautiful collection of vegan smoothies from powerhouse blogger The Blender Girl, featuring photographs, flavor boosters, and nutritional add-ons for every recipe.
The Blender Girl takes smoothies to the next level in this comprehensive guide, helping you blast your way to good health and blended bliss. These 100 creative and delicious recipes are designed to fit your every need, whether you want to detox, lose a few pounds, get energized, or guard against seasonal colds. Each smoothie has three optional boosters (like chia seeds, ginger, coconut oil, or wheat grass) that allow you to ramp up flavor, nutrient value, or both. Featuring gorgeous photography throughout, a smoothie pantry that demystifies unusual ingredients, icons to identify smoothies that fit your particular dietary needs, and strategies for achieving smoothie success, this accessible handbook makes it fun and easy to find your perfect blend. – Goodreads
I looooove getting cookbooks from Blogging for Books, and I was so incredibly excited to see The Blender Girl Smoothies as a review option! In order to truly evaluate a book, I feel that you really need to make 3-4 recipes from it—so I chose one smooth from each chapter.
There were a ton of smoothies to choose from in here—some more ballsy than others. For example, I should have probably made the Red Velvet dessert smoothie made with beets, but I was too scared.
I loved the option of add-ins with these recipes—if you wanted to toss in some minced ginger, acai powder or cinnamon to give it a health boost, you could. She recommended things that would work well with each recipe to take the guesswork out of flavors. As a person who often messes up smoothies, this was good.
One downside was the number of ingredients in each smoothie—I could see myself choosing a recipe each week, but it would become very cost-prohibitive to buy fresh produce for different daily smoothies. Overall, I rated 4/5 on Goodreads—some of the smoothies were a little too weird for my taste.
Apple and Mango Madness (Clean & Green chapter)
It was very clean and definitely green. I could see myself making this often. It made two servings, so I poured one for Kiesha. She drank it for about 20 minutes and handed the mostly full glass over. “It tastes like spinach. I’m not finishing this,” she said. “It’s not bad, and I put spinach in everything, so I don’t know why I don’t like it.” So there you have it. If you don’t have the tastebuds of Popeye, don’t pour this one (for the record, I LOVE it). To each’s own!
Vivid Vision (An Exotic Ride chapter)
From the this chapter, I chose the Vivid Vision smoothie, which promises to deliver “omega-3 fatty acids, the antioxidants lutein and zeaxanthin, and vitamins A, C, and E to promote ocular health and stave off age-related vision problems…”. I had to make one substitution—I didn’t have almond milk, so I used some regular ol’ cow milk. This smoothie was weird…so weird. It wasn’t bad, but I couldn’t taste the orange and it kind of tasted carrot milk. “It’s not the worst smoothie you’ve made,” was the feedback from my husband, who was my co-guinea pig.
Pink Cooler (Light and Fruity chapter)
From the Light and Fruity chapter, I selected the super simple two-ingredient Pink Cooler smoothie. It was very refreshing. Feedback from the guinea pig husband? “It’s very good.” I also liked this smoothie, but I wouldn’t make a habit of making it—the sugar content is way too high for me to justify. It would be nice for a hot summer day, though. I usually toss a ton of stuff into my smoothies, so this was a nice reminder to keep it simple once in a while.
Brownie Batter (Dessert chapter)
No surprise here—it was our favorite so far. “It was very good,” my husband said. When I told him that he literally said the same thing for something else, he amended his statement to “and it’s very chocolatey.” With cacao powder, frozen bananas, cashews, pecans, and cacao nibs for garnish, this sweet treat really hit the spot for a post-dinner dessert. It was definitely a healthy, cold take on brownie batter. I can’t wait to try other dessert recipes!
Thank you to Blogging for Books for the opportunity to read and review this book!
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