This Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie recipe works great as either a breakfast or snack option, keeping me full and satisfying a sweet craving at the same time. You can tweak the recipe to make it a bit lower in fat and calories, and/or higher in protein, depending on your goals. It has a wonderful balance of flavors, making it just as much of a chocolate smoothie (for you chocolate lovers out there!)
I like having a few easy smoothie recipes memorized, ones where I always have the ingredients ready to go. Sometimes it’s because I’m rushing, need a snack, or am simply feeling a bit lazy (when I’m feeling more motivated, I love a good smoothie bowl. Be sure to check out my Acai Berry Smoothie Bowl. More on these below).
Chocolate and peanut butter is one of my favorite flavor combinations, so this smoothie has been a staple of mine for quite some time. I can keep it reasonably light, or up the protein so it functions as a meal replacement.
How to Make a Smoothie Healthy (or “Healthier”)
The nutritional content in this recipe is valid if you use regular peanut butter, but I’ve recently become a huge fan of dehydrated peanut powder. Not the ones like PB2, which include sugar and other unnecessary ingredients.
There are several brands of peanut powder that are actually nothing but dehydrated peanuts. I found one at Whole Foods called Crazy Richards Pure PB, and now buy it in bulk on Amazon where it’s much cheaper. Two tablespoons is only 50 calories and 1.5 grams of fat! It also has 6 grams of protein.
I like adding a touch of protein powder as well sometimes if I’m having the smoothie in place of an actual breakfast. Stay away from this if you’re vegetarian, but I love Vital Proteins Collagen Powder. One scoop has 9 grams of protein (you can use up to two scoops), and is totally flavorless. I skip this step if I’m having the smoothie as a snack.
I don’t have a specific brand recommendation for a vegetarian protein powder, but I recommend using something that’s unflavored and unsweetened so it doesn’t interfere with the other ingredients.
How to Make a Smoothie Thicker
Cutting back on the liquids is the easiest way to thicken a smoothie. You can also increase the thickening agent. For a thicker smoothie, try cutting the milk back to 3/4 cup or less, and/or using a larger banana.
You can froth up a smoothie by adding a handful of ice, which is helpful if you’re not starting with a frozen banana. Make sure to drink the smoothie ASAP, or you’ll wind up getting the opposite effect when the ice melts! (Sorry if that one was too obvious).
Smoothie Ingredient Substitutions
If you’re using regular nut butter as opposed to the powdered version, you can swap out the peanut butter for cashew or almond butter. Cashew butter is one of my favorites! Try my homemade cashew butter or almond butter if you’re into DIY pantry staples.
I prefer using milk (usually 2%) over yogurt in this recipe. While yogurt is a great smoothie thickener, I think it adds too much tang here, and the flavor clashes with the chocolate and banana. But you can absolutely swap in yogurt if you prefer.
Try a Smoothie Bowl
Have you ever had a smoothie bowl? I thought they seemed gimmicky until I tried one myself. Now I’m a fan! Check out my green berry granola smoothie bowl for an example.
I like cereal (and yogurt with toppings), and smoothie bowls are basically the same thing but with a smoothie base. It’s an opportunity to add texture with complimentary flavors.
For a chocolate peanut butter smoothie, some great toppings would be sliced bananas, chopped, roasted nuts, granola and maybe some cacao nibs. Maybe with a bit of honey drizzled on top.
Looking for more breakfast recipes?
Be sure to check out my simple overnight oats and banana millet breakfast porridge!
Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie
Ingredients
- 1 medium banana, chopped and preferably frozen
- 1 cup milk (skim, low-fat, non-dairy, etc)
- 1 1/2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2-3 tablespoons creamy peanut butter (cashew or almond butter, or peanut butter powder may be substituted)
- 1 teaspoon honey or light agave nectar (see notes)
- Optional: 1-2 scoops Vital Proteins Collagen Peptides (see notes)
Instructions
- Puree the banana, milk, cocoa powder, peanut butter, and honey in a blender. Taste and add more sweetener if desired.
- Serve immediately.
Notes
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If you want to add additional sweetness without using honey or agave nectar, you can add 1/2 a chopped apple (I don't bother peeling it, but you might want to since the peel adds some texture). Another option would be a few drops of liquid Stevia.Â
Please read my full post for additional recipe notes, tips, and serving suggestions!
Nutrition
Recipe Troubleshooting
For immediate help troubleshooting a recipe, please email me using the form on my contact page. I’ll try to respond to urgent questions as quickly as possible! For all general questions, please leave a comment here :)
Gail @ A Healthy Hunger says
Gotta say that there has been more than one time where I wanted to say: Here’s the recipe.
boom.
done.
You rock woman! and your talents are boundless. Thanks for a great post.
Laura Dembowski says
I’m the opposite. I often find myself uninspired to make something or feeling like I don’t want to make it and I hate taking photos. But I’ll write all day everyday. We should team up :). Oh and as much as I love to write, I do get writer’s block and it is not being lazy!
Kitchen Belleicious says
oh divine! I know two little boys who would love this:)
Mary Frances says
I completely agree with you – it is a gift not all us have! And with blog posts, I go back and forth between “I have nothing exciting to write about” and “I shared a story yesterday, maybe I need to it again” but then, “very few people even read the middle and just skip to the recipe, so should I really invest the time” blah blah blah. You are anything but lazy and it shows in your photos and recipes. This is my favorite combination and smoothies are the best! Guess what I’ll be trying soon! ;)
Kim Bultman | a little lunch says
Jennifer, I enjoyed what you wrote! I also appreciate the hard work you put into your photos and recipes — it shows. For me, writing is the fun part, but there are times when the words just aren’t there. (My peeve is with whoever came up with the term ‘writer’s block!’) Next time I start staring at the screen wondering what to write, I’m going to take a break, make this shake, and enjoy every sip.
Liz {What Dress Code?} says
I can DEFINITELY commiserate — I, like you, often feel like by the time I go through the effort of creating, shooting, editing, re-editing, re-shooting, etc. in my posts, it’s a whole other uphill battle to create words and a story to go with my photos and have it really resonate. I agree with you — that should be ok, and and should be enough.
Courtney says
I was hoping you would say something about this after I saw your Twitter exchange. I totally agree with you on being a triple threat, and I would also add that bloggers also have the task of maintaining a website and doing their own backend work on said site. I love that I’ve taught myself so much about web design, but I’d really rather spend my extra time in the kitchen, not sitting in front of the computer Googling how to fix something on my blog.
Jennifer Farley says
Oh man, I *hate* maintaining the website. Every time there is a glitch I wind up losing hours trying to troubleshoot it. I bought a book about WordPress fundamentals but it puts me to sleep.
Sabrina Modelle says
UG. I can’t believe Ruhlman said that. Thank you for your post. I’m in the midst of a LONG ass case of writers block and I hate it. What Ruhlman doesn’t take into account is that most people who are writing still have day jobs. Very few of us are fortunate enough to call food writing, photography, recipe development our full time jobs. And even those of us who do this full time are sure to come up against creative blocks. #stopjudging
Christine (Cook the Story) says
I agree with you totally. It’s definitely not laziness. I can’t speak for everyone else, but I know what it is for me sometimes. Confusion about what to write. I want to tell the readers about the recipe, how delicious it is, how easy. I also want to maybe share something from my life. Or something that I read (or saw on twitter!) lately. And then I need to find a way to tie that into the recipe. And it feels fake when I try to tie it in. So I stare at my computer screen not only having trouble writing anything but even just trying to decide which angle to take. (I will say that I’ve started taking my laptop with me to my kids’ activities. If there’s time in between watching them, I will write up a paragraph there. Or in the car (parked!) while waiting for something. Somehow, if I’m not in front of my usual computer, in my office, connected to the internet, I can write much better. Often consider taking my laptop to Starbucks and sitting there for a few hours and writing a bunch of posts). Thanks for this! It really needed to be said!
Jocelyn @BruCrew Life says
I totally understand!!! I put so much time into my recipes and pictures that when I sit down to do a post, I blank almost every single time. You have an absolutely awesome blog and I always enjoy seeing your posts and photos! Just keep doing what you do best!!! We heart ya!!!
Liz@Virtually Homemade says
A picture is worth a thousand words (corny but true). Your photographs are so beautiful you don’t need to write anything!
Sophia @ NY Foodgasm says
I kinda agree, I LOVE making the food and photographing it, the writing of the post is sometimes the pain in the ass as you don’t even feel like people read it at times. But it is a good way for people to get to know you. So it is a necessary and it can be the fun part of blogging. I have gotten writing assignments in magazines because of my job, so it can also be of benefit to you to write. It feel like MORE work though after you already developed a recipe and took so much time to photograph it. But I think most people are coming to your blog for the fantastic photos and recipes. So don’t worry about it. :)
Samantha says
I am right there with you. Let’s start a photo blog where we just do photo essays or something completely visual.
Lori @ Foxes Love Lemons says
I hear you on this. I love the cooking and the photography. And *sometimes* I can write what I think amounts to a coherent blog post. But more often than now, I just want to write “Here’s these meatballs I made. They were awesome. Bye.”
Katie | Healthy Seasonal Recipes says
I totally agree Jennifer. I also agree with what ^^ Christine ^^ said. It takes a ton of effort to write really good quality posts, and I don’t always have it in me. Lazy? No. Of course I can bust out a blog post even if I have nothing to say, but do my readers really want to hear that garbage? No not really. I am so glad you posted this. And as always your photography speaks for itself ;)