A truly innocent smoothie

Those funny folk at Innocent smoothie are craftier than they let on. This morning, for breakfast, I followed their recipe for strawberry and banana smoothie ... it was delicious, but not quite as delicious as the stuff that comes out of the box - more apple-y, pippier, a lighter shade of red. It just happened that Alfred had cunningly sneaked an Innocent carton into my shopping trolley yesterday without my noticing, so we looked up the ingredients - not a hint of apple, 76 pressed grapes instead. Red ones, at a guess.

Strawberry and banana smoothie for two or three

One banana
14 strawberries (well, all right, a small punnet of strawberries)
the juice of an orange (mine came out of a carton)
enough apple juice to get to the thickness (or rather, thinness) you want

Whizz all this in your blender.


















As you can see from the photograph, I used apple juice from a bottle. It comes from Waterperry Gardens, one of my favourite places in Oxfordshire. I buy our apple juice there to give me a regular excuse to visit. It's as close as you can get to drinking an apple, as it comes from named varieties of apple, which means you can choose exactly how your juice tastes. Today's was Winter King, which is a little on the sweet side for my taste - I like the really sharp juices.

The smoothie was delicious, but the children said that Innocent's version was better, and I'm inclined to agree with them. Somehow, in their processing, they scrunch up the strawberry seeds. As you know, I'm not the biggest fan of industrially processed food, but I think that I'm prepared to make an (occasional) exception for Innocent. Or does that mean I've been "had" by their extremely slick marketing men?