(Back to the Main Recipes Page!)

Wren's Choco-Coffee Breakfast Shake

Prep Work

This recipes's a bit special since you'll have to freeze some stuff ahead of time!

  • Get a ripe banana and put it in the freezer for a few days. I recommend letting the banana ripen to the point where it's got a bunch of brown spots in it before freezing it. A way to get it to ripen faster is to leave it in an oven for a few days, of course leaving the oven off the whole time. If you have to bake something in between, make sure to take the bananas out first!!
  • Make some coffee, or otherwise buy some cold brew or other already-made coffee, and pour it into an ice cube tray. Then just put it in the freezer to freeze!

Ingredients

Note that you will need a blender for this one!

  • 4 cubes (about half a cup as a liquid, more or less) of the frozen coffee
  • 1 cup of milk (be it dairy, soy, almond, cashew, etc.)
  • About 5 or 6 scoops of chocolate ice cream
  • 1 frozen ripe banana
  • 1 tablespoon peanut butter (or other nut/seed butter, like almond butter or hazelnut butter)
  • 1/2 tablespoon (or 1 teaspoon) of sugar
  • 1/2 tablespoon (or 1 teaspoon) of coconut oil
  • Dash of sea salt

Instructions

  1. Let the banana thaw for a bit on the counter, mainly to make it easier to peel. I recommend putting it on a sheet of Saran wrap or some other type of plastic sheet to protect your counter from staining (which can happen, as I have found out!!). Also flip it onto the other side to get that thawed a bit too. It can take maybe 10 minutes for it to thaw enough for the next step.
  2. Once it's thawed enough, peel the banana. To make it easier to peel, cut the ends of the banana, then cut it lengthwise on one of the sides that was face down on the counter.
  3. Put all of the ingredients into a blender, then blend thoroughly.
  4. And that's it! Makes about 2 servings, or one big serving if you want it for yourself!

My Ramblings About This Recipe

Admittedly I just call this a breakfast shake since I only ever make it for breakfast. It's got a ton of flavor so it's a great start to the day!

At one point, I was subscribed to one of those meal-kit provider things (I forget which one specifically). They had this dark chocolate and banana coffee drink in particular that I really liked. I combined that with a dairy-free chocolate ice cream they also had into a delicious milkshake! After stopping the subscription, I tried to recreate that drink as best as I could with ingredients I could buy myself, and that's how I came up with this.

Here's my personal recommendations for some of the ingredients, in list form:

  • For the coffee, I usually use Caflifia Farms cold brews, more specifically the mocha almond latte. As the name suggests, it's also got a bit of almond milk in it.
  • For the milk, I go with almond milk or cashew milk. Either way, I usually use the kind that is unsweet but has vanilla already in it. If you want to use non-vanilla-added milk but still have a bit of vanilla, I'd say 1/2 teaspoon should be fine? Honestly not entirely sure though.
  • For the chocolate ice cream, plain chocolate from Häagen-Dazs (or really any brand) works fine. There used to be this dark chocolate avocado-based ice cream I would use for this recipe, and it was really good. Despite it being made from avocado, it tasted pretty much the same as regular ice cream! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to buy it at the stores I normally shop at anymore, so I just use regular chocolate ice cream.
  • For the nut butter, admittedly I use sunflower butter (i.e. made from sunflower seeds) since to me it tastes a little better than peanut butter. Plus, if you have a peanut allergy, it's a great alternative in my opinion!
  • For the sugar, plain white sugar could probably work fine, but personally I always use brown or raw sugar. You could probably also use honey instead, but I'm not sure if it'd be in the same amount as the sugar or a bit more.