Why in tarnation, I hear you asking, would we want a Christmas smoothie?
I can think of at least 3 reasons:
1. If you have to take something to a fancy-pants party, you can be reasonably confident that no one else is going to turn up with these (unless, of course, someone at the party came to the Nibl Festive Super Snacks workshop last weekend. Then you may find yourself in the food version of that old ‘she’s-wearing-MY-dress’ conundrum, and you have my permission to sit in the corner and refuse to enjoy yourself one little bit for the entire evening. To be fair, pre-Christmas events often result in this anyway. You might as well have a good reason to sulk).
2. They look super-cute! Prepare the smoothies ahead of time, transport them in jars, and when you’re at the venue, pour them in layers. Served en masse in little shot glasses, they look O for Oarsome. Especially if you use the spirulina which, being a micro-algae, sometimes has the effect of making the green smoothie layer bubble a little. As you can see in the photos, this looks amazing if it makes its way through the red layer. (Or maybe it’s just an uber food geek like me who finds that kind of thing exciting.)
3. You can feel smug that – in amongst the fruit mince pies and endless rounds of chips and dip and cake and I’m-never-doing-that-again overindulgence – you’ve consumed something that was healthy. At least you got some fruit and veg in there somewhere, and it wasn’t just the brandy-soaked peaches in the trifle (again, this probably says a lot more about me than it does you).
(Want more fantastic smoothie recipes? Grab yourself some of my best recipes for free in this ebook.)
Christmas Smoothies
Ingredients
Red layer
1 cup water
½ a small beetroot, peeled and chopped/grated
1 banana
1 apple, core removed
1 orange, peeled
1 cup fresh strawberries
1 cup frozen raspberries, thawed
Green layer
1½ cups water
1 cup greens (baby spinach/kale – thick stems removed)
1 stick celery, washed and chopped
1 banana
1 mango, cubed
2 kiwifruit, peeled
½ cup green grapes, washed
½ an avocado
Juice of ½ a lime
1 large sprig of mint
Dash of spirulina (approx half a teaspoon, optional)
Garnish
1 pomegranate or 1/4 telegraph cucumber, very finely diced(optional)
Instructions
Mix ingredients for red layer in blender until smooth. Half-fill glasses with red smoothie. Wash blender.
Mix ingredients for green layer in blender until smooth. Fill glasses almost to top with green smoothie.
Carefully place a small amount of red smoothie on top of green layer, allowing both colours to show. Garnish with pomegranate seeds or diced cucumber if desired.
Makes 8 large smoothies or 20+ small smoothies. Halve the recipe to make less, or store unused smoothies in airtight jars in fridge for up to 2 days.
As you can see, I didn’t bother with the garnish. They still look gorgeous without it. I did have a pomegranate, but things were getting on top of me and I couldn’t face the idea of fighting to get the seeds out. Although if I’d thought about it, I would have done it the easy way – like this (they’re lying about the 10 seconds thing, by the way):
Hey if you make these smoothies and you’re on social media, post a pic with the hashtag #niblonthis so we can see how they turned out! And if someone else had the same idea, sneakily photograph theirs too. We’ll all agree that yours were the best.
Need to print this recipe? I have you covered – click here.
