This deceptively delicious green shake from the new cookbook The Blender Girl by Tess Masters is the perfect treat to whip up when you want your food to BE healthy but not necessarily TASTE healthy. When a recipe for kale is this good, it’s easy to eat leafy greens every day!
Tastes-Like-Ice-Cream Kale
SunCafe, my favorite local raw restaurant, won SeriousEats.com’s Best Smoothie in L.A. award for a blend that’s similar to this one. I’m not sure exactly what they put in their award-winner, but this is pretty close. One taste and you’ll understand why kale-phobic omnivores line up and even double-park in front of SunCafe to run in and get their fill. Still the most popular recipe on my website, this is the Holy Grail of Kale.
serves 2
1/2 cup (120ml) water
1/2 teaspoon probiotic powder (optional)
1/2 cup (70g) raw unsalted cashews, soaked
1 cup (25g) torn-up curly green kale leaves (1 or 2 large leaves with stalk removed, ripped into small pieces), plus more to taste
2 ripe bananas, fresh or frozen
1/4 cup (43g) chopped pitted dates, soaked (see note), or 1 tablespoon pure maple syrup, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon alcohol-free vanilla extract
2 cups (250g) ice cubes (a little less if using frozen bananas)
1/2 teaspoon minced ginger, plus more to taste (optional)
Put all of the ingredients into your blender in the order listed and puree for about a minute, until smooth and creamy. Tweak flavors to taste (you may like a bit more kale, sweetener, or ginger). Note: With a conventional blender, you’ll get the smoothest consistency if you use maple syrup or chop the dates finely.
Reprinted with permission from The Blender Girl by Tess Masters, copyright (c) 2014. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Random House LLC.
