Blueberry Breakfast Smoothie

Back-to-School Bootcamp continues and today it’s all about breakfast. With the lazy mornings of summer in the rear view mirror, it’s time to get your breakfast groove on. Ease and speed are everything when it comes to school day mornings, and few foods meet that criteria better than a smoothie. Problem is, a lot of them don’t have the staying power needed to energize you until lunchtime.

Meet Blueberry Pancake Smoothie. It’s our new jam over here (a nice change from the Chocolate Breakfast Drink that sustained Rosie for an entire semester last year). This blueberry number is one of 75 recipes in Smoothie-Licious, a new cookbook I got my hands on thanks to author Jenna Helwig, who kindly sent me a copy. As the food editor of Parents’ Magazine, Jenna knows what she’s doing when it comes to food and family. The book is brimming with recipes for smoothies, ice pops, and whole fruit drinks that are inspiring without being fussy.  The recipes strike that tricky balance of being both wholesome and tasty. The green smoothies don’t taste like a backyard lawn and the more decadent drinks still manage to be relatively wholesome.This blueberry breakfast smoothie is a perfect solution to the school day breakfast challenge. It calls for ordinary ingredients, takes no time to make, and meets my qualifications for a nourishing meal. Each serving delivers 12 grams of protein, 4 grams of fiber, about 20 percent of your daily calcium needs, and more than half your daily vitamin C needs, at under 300 calories. All that while still managing to be creamy and delicious. Tasty enough, in fact, to rouse those back-to-school sleepy heads right out of their warm beds.

If you are seeking more smoothie inspiration, check out this line up of ideas over on Cooking Light.

This post is part of my Back-to-School Bootcamp series. You might also like:

School Lunch Gear Guide

Lunch Box Veggie Wraps

12 Speedy School Day Breakfasts.

5 from 1 vote

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Blueberry Pancake Smoothie

This pretty purple slurp is a quick and healthy alternative to a stack of blueberry pancakes. It’s sweet from the blueberries and syrupy from the, well, syrup. Yogurt stands in for buttermilk, giving the drink a hint of tang. I like the sweet creaminess of regular milk here, but feel free to substitute coconut milk for a tropical twist.

Servings 2 smoothies

Ingredients

• 1 cup milk
• 2/3 cup plain Greek yogurt
• 1¼ cups frozen blueberries
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup , plus more to taste

Instructions

1. Add all of the ingredients to the blender, starting with the milk.
2. Cover and blend until smooth, about 30 seconds.
3. Taste for sweetness, adding more maple syrup if desired.

Excerpted from Smoothie-Licious, © 2015 by Jenna Helwig. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. Photo credit: Lauren Volo.