Chocolate Banana Smoothie

Sweetened with healthy Medjool dates, this chocolate banana smoothie is a kid-friendly breakfast that is packed with protein from peanut butter.

A chocolate banana smoothie sounds like a pretty great way to start the day, don't you think? I'm always looking for new ways to start my day, because I've found that the more often I make breakfast, the more challenging it becomes. It's so easy to get stuck in the same, monotonous morning routine, eating the same breakfast every morning. But what fun is that?

As long as the alarm doesn’t sound before 6am, I would consider myself to be a morning person. I love the silence that comes with early mornings and breakfast has always been my favourite meal. Slower paced mornings are a luxury; there is time for coffee and breakfast, reading the headlines, skimming my twitter feed, and getting a few important things done for school or work. They are a treat that I really savour. I also find that I do my best work in the mornings, so I try to schedule the difficult things on my to-do list in the morning. Unfortunately, these mornings don’t really exist during the workweek – unless I wanted to get up before 6am, which I don’t right now, maybe one day. I'm always inspired by those on my Instagram feed who are up at 4am working on their novels. With the morning rush, breakfast has kind of fallen by the wayside, but I’ve recently been warming up to smoothies (I never really enjoyed them much before) and this chocolate banana smoothie is part of the equation.

You’ll never guess that there are two secret ingredients in this smoothie, peanut butter and Natural Delights Medjool dates. The peanut butter (or you could use almond butter) gives a nice boost of protein but the real secret ingredient is the medjool dates. They add a subtle sweetness that takes this smoothie over the top, plus they are packed with antioxidants, which is just an added bonus. You could use honey as a sweetener, but I've found that dates are the perfect ingredient for this. Depending on how sweet you like your smoothies, you can adjust this recipe and use just one or two.

 Before this smoothie recipe, I hadn’t really worked very much with any kind of date so starting off with such a simple recipe inspired by the Medjool Date Shake was a great way to get acquainted with this fruit (yes, they are a fruit). I've had dates on their own as a snack, but I always found them to be a bit overwhelmingly sweet so I like to pair them with more bitter ingredients, like the cocoa powder in this banana smoothie. Now, these medjools are kind of my new thing, they are the perfect natural sweetener, great for satisfying that afternoon sugar craving (just add a touch of dark chocolate, and you'll be in heaven) and they go really well in savoury Moroccan dishes.

Disclosure: Natural Delights provided me with the product. I was not compensated in any other form for writing this post. The decision to write about the chocolate banana smoothie was my own and all opinions are 100% mine.