Berry & Beet Smoothies
Let’s be honest for a moment. The color of these smoothies is equal parts awesome and kind of freaky, right?
Freaky because it’s so bright and candy-colored that it’s a hue I would normally associate with artificial coloring. Awesome, because it’s 100% natural!
Beets are not only one of my favorite foods, but they are one of nature’s best natural food colorings.
I’ve used beet juice to dye Easter eggs and add a boost of red color to a red velvet cake.
And since the brighter and more fun-looking a smoothie is (I love the rich yellow color that my lemon smoothie gets from turmeric), the more likely I am to want to drink it, I’ve been using beets in my smoothies lately, too!
I’m sharing one of my favorite (bright and cheerful!) smoothies today. If you have five minutes and a good blender, you can whip up these Berry & Beet Smoothies quickly.
Simply blend together half of a beet, a banana, some raspberries (also love these in my Valentine’s dessert shooters) a touch of lime juice and honey, and some lowfat vanilla yogurt and milk for added protein and calcium. Blend in some ice at the end to keep it nice and frosty!
Use any extra berries to top a frozen yogurt pie for dessert.
Psst – if you love brightly colored smoothies, my blueberry lemon smoothie is also bright purple, thanks to blueberries! My carrot cake smoothie isn’t quite as brightly colored, but you will love the flavor.
Berry & Beet Smoothies
Ingredients
- 1 ripe banana, peeled
- 1/2 medium beet, peeled
- 1/2 cup raspberries
- 1/2 cup lowfat vanilla yogurt
- 1/4 cup 2% milk
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
- 3/4 cup ice
Instructions
- In blender, combine banana, beet, raspberries, yogurt, milk, honey and lime juice; blend until smooth. Add ice and blend until smooth. Serve immediately.
My all time fave is peanut butter banana with some steel cut oats 🙂
I like strawberry banana
OJ, Frozen Berries, Spinach, Flax Seed and a fresh peach
I love making an orange, banana and mango smoothie.
I like strawberry banana orange juice.
I like mango smoothies.
My favorite is using vanilla yogurt, strawberries and banana’s with a little milk and ice.
My favorite is raspberry papaya. 1 ripe banana
 raspberry yogurt
 chopped fresh papaya
 fresh or frozen raspberries
 almond milk and lime juice
My favorite smoothie recipe is strawberry/peach/vanilla yogurt with a handful of spinach. Â Thank you for the wonderful giveaway.
Erin
Strawberry banana.
What a lovely color Lori. Looks absolutely refreshing. You have a lovely blog.
Never thought of using beets in a smoothie. Thanks for the idea!
Stupid question time: is your beet raw or cooked??? Â Thanks.
Hi Susan! I used a raw beet, but I’ve seen smoothies made with roasted ones, too. I think either works. But, if you’re going to use a raw one, I think you need a powerful blender (I use a Vitamix). With a less-powerful blender, I would recommend using a roasted beet. Hope that helps!
It helps a lot, Lori.  Thanks!  I have a Blendtec, so I could use raw, but I think I’d probably choose to use a roasted beet for this.  Just might have one left over this week, so I could try this out…
I usually just make a berry and banana smoothie. This smoothie looks delicious! That color is gorgeous!
The smoothie sounds wonderful.  The giveaway (which I don’t want to enter) makes me wish we had Kroger here…  We live in a grocery store desert here.
WOW, that is a gorgeously vibrant color! If I’m being honest, I don’t like beets, but even I would be happy to drink them in this smoothie because it looks like cheeriness in a glass.