Nectresse and the Wonderful World of Smoothies

Here's the latest in product review posts from my Sugar 'N Spice Influenster box!  Here's my standard disclaimer shill - I got the Nectresse free from Influenster! Yay me!  Influenster isn't paying me to write this review (I wish, right!?)  I'm sharing with you a Nectresse recipe that I found as part of my latest obsession. Smoothies!

Yum!

I bought a blender a few months ago, and I've been checking out recipes ever since.  My favorite ones are milk, spinach, frozen fruit, and bananas.  The fruit gives enough sweetness, while the spinach and milk give me the vitamins I need to be... SUPERMOM!!!  However, I wanted to start using yogurt in smoothies.  There's a lot more protein and probiotics, and it gives the smoothie a nice, thick texture.

Unfortunately... have you tasted plain yogurt lately?  It's not good.  And I didn't want to use an artificial sweetener just to make my all-natural food palatable.  But then I got Nectresse, and thought... why not use an all-natural (but still no-calorie!) sweetener?  Nectresse is made from the extract of monkfruit (a small, green melon) and "other natural sweeteners".  Here's the recipe I found on the Nectresse website:

Strawberry Banana Smoothie:
1/2 Medium Banana
3 Frozen Strawberries
1/4 cup Nonfat Plain Yogurt
2 Nectresse Packets
1/3 cup Ice

I made a few changes - My yogurt had a little bit of fat in it!  Also, my strawberries weren't frozen, I even picked them from the field myself!  Yup, it's rural out here.  There are... strawberry fields.  Forever.  (Heh.)  And I doubled the recipe, because my hubby has morphed into a Smoothie Monster and he will cry if I don't share (and now I'll know if he reads this post!).

Here are all the ingredients packed into the blender:

Banana, strawberries, yogurt, ice.

Pouring in the Nectresse:

mmmm... Monkfruit!

And... voila! Perfection!

Awww... garnishes!  I'm just THAT AWESOME.

The smoothies were good!  I had tried using Nectresse in a cup of tea before, but there was a weird aftertaste (not bad, but my taste buds are trained for Splenda).  Using the Nectresse in a smoothie was definitely a good idea, because it masked the sour yogurt taste without being overly sweet.  I'll be using the rest of the Nectresse I received to make yogurt smoothies!  Hooray!

And if you're reading this, I love you, Smoothie Monster!