The finished product…my Dairy Queen inspired, Paleo Butter Pecan Caramel Smoothie

I know I always start my posts with some random topic before I ever get to the recipe, but honestly this smoothie is THAT good that I can’t beat around the bush and get carried away with small talk. I personally think this smoothie tastes like a butter pecan ice cream milkshake, NO LIE. Or how about everyone’s fave Girl Scout cookies, Somoas, which recently for some crazy, God- forsaken reason changed it’s name to “Caramel deLites”? Either way, I MUST GET DOWN TO BUSINESS and share this recipe with you because I love how it turned out. It’s a game changer.

As some of you close to me know, a month and half ago my wonderful (and what I thought then was over priced and expensive) Breville Blender broke. The week prior to our blender calling it quits, my mother- in- law bought my father- in- law a Vitamix blender for his birthday. I was so jealous ecstatic for him! I have always wanted a Vitamix, come on who doesn’t? I was always enamored with those Vitamix demos at stores but I knew they were out of my price range. Once I knew someone in my family had a Vitamix I could not get it off the brain, but I could not justify buying one when I had a perfectly good blender. And yet, I still dreamed of a world with a Vitamix.  I don’t know if all of my ill thoughts sent bad juju to my blender, but no lie, within one week of my father- in- law getting his Vitamix, my blender broke! And boy was I ever so happy! I took it as a sign that I was destined to have a Vitamix and thanks to the help of my amazing in-laws, we now own a Vitamix.

Fastfoward one month plus of making EVERYTHING you can think of in your Vitamix; we made homemade nut butters, smoothies galore, ice cream, soups, etc. Life was good. Our favorite thing to make was smoothies of course and boy did we make smoothies. Ever since I came up with the ever so fabulous 21DSD Green Monster Smoothie, I have never looked backed….well until recently when I realized we were slowly becoming all “spinached” out. I know it is not a bad thing when you realize your family goes through a big 2.5lb bag of fresh spinach from Costco weekly without a problem; you know you have a spinach smoothie addiction. And for only $3.99 a pop, you can’t go wrong.  We were very adventurous in the beginning  adding mangoes here or avocados there to our daily smoothie concoctions, but nothing was blog worthy until I came up with the wonderful Green Machine. I loved the original recipe so much because not only does it pack a ton of your daily veggie servings, but more so it is so yummy and satisfies my sweet tooth cravings. But after a month of eating this smoothie daily or at least every other day, we were all ready for some new variations. So once again I started experimenting and I had my sites on a fruitier smoothie this time around but my heart kept going back to bananas and almond butter. Do you blame me? What a winning combination, right?  I still was not satisfied until a week ago when I was forced to drive 2+ hours east of Austin in the middle of nowhere in Texas for work, I suddenly was inspired. After driving miles and miles of rolling hills, ranches and cattle, the only thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was Dairy Queen! I must have passed 3 or 4 or even 5. It reminded me that I haven’t been to a Dairy Queen in ages and boy was I growing delirious that I almost stopped and ordered a blizzard myself. It must have been the pregnancy hormones and cravings talking. Almost! Well, I will be the first to tell you now, that this smoothie was inspired by one of the Blizzard’s of the month near Brownwood, Texas. They were advertising butter pecan blizzard and it got me thinking that I could make a smoothie that was more of a dessert. So after a few tries of developing the BEST recipe, I came up with this yummy smoothie and not to toot my own horn, it turned out better than expected. The best part of the recipe is the fact that I have all the ingredients on hand 24/7.

As you know, my criteria for smoothies are of course they must be healthy, paleo and above all it must be tasty and delicious. Try my Paleo Butter Pecan Caramel Smoothie out and let me know what you think. I hope it does not disappoint.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Butter Pecan Caramel Smoothie

 

Print

Prep time

2 mins

Total time

2 mins

 

Who does not love those Girl Scout Caramel deLites or Butter Pecan Ice Cream? Well now you can have a healthy Paleo version of them but in a glass! Your taste buds will be fooled.

Author: Our Full Plate

Recipe type: Smoothie

Cuisine: Paleo

Serves: 1

Ingredients

• 2 dates
• ½ of a frozen banana
• ½ cup of almond milk
• ¼ teaspoon of maple syrup (omit if you don't like it very sweet)
• 1 teaspoon of almond butter
• 4 or 5 ice cubes

Instructions

1. Place all ingredients in your Vitamix, blender, etc and blend.
2. Enjoy!

3.2.1230

My Paleo Butter Pecan Caramel Smoothie Ingredients

A close up of my Paleo Butter Pecan Caramel Smoothie with my secret weapon, dates!

One more, it’s too good to not post

So what’s the verdict? Who would have guessed my secret ingredient was DATES!?!?!? Who is skipping Dairy Queen and making this smoothie/ non dairy milkshake instead?