I recently invested in Breville’s Blend Active (see: Amazon for more reviews and potential buying, currently a lovely £20, and as a student I have the beauty of a Prime account), and I’m already a self-proclaimed addict.
It’s a whole new level of easy, and for such a tiny blender, it does a remarkable job. For frozen fruit or chunkier bits (like pineapple, as I discovered this morning) it can take a little longer, but barely. Living with six other people means that loud-ass blending at 7am is completely inappropriate, but I only need to buzz the ‘BLEND’ button for a solid three seconds, give it a couple of pulses, and my soft-fruit smoothie is done – though, I probably still wouldn’t recommend early morning blending, along with early morning vacuuming and early morning karaoke, it’s probably best left undone.
The cheapest set is two bottles (600ml each) with lids, blender body, and the twist-on blade part. A very simple process with such delicious results.
My first smoothie was a simple one: banana, plums, and almond milk. I’m hoping that this sets me up nicely to begin properly juicing!
Soooo prettttttyyyyy! Quick instructions (also known as common sense – this is so beautifully basic, at this stage), are as follows:The first step for me was going “ahhh I don’t have ice”. Easy. Frozen fruit. If you don’t want to buy frozen fruit, freeze your own! My current go-to is doing a late-night supermarket run and stocking up on discount pre-cut fruit pots that are usually part of the meal deals. They go down to 69p pretty quick. I get home, put them straight in the freezer, and can then use them whenever.
Anyway! I hadn’t thought that far ahead, at this First Smoothie Ever stage.
I was desperate to make something and try it out, so I used something I wouldn’t normally have done. Baby plums and bananas. Plums aren’t really in season at the moment, so these weren’t the sweetest, but were perfectly balanced out by the too-ripe bananas.
I diced up the bananas and three of the tiny plums. And then chucked them into a sandwich bag and put them in the freezer.
The next morning I took them out and prepped my smoothie. In this picture you can see the parts that come with the Breville Blend Active: the sports bottle (also the container in which the blending happens, you literally blend-and-go), its green lid, the black blade part that twists onto the bottle where the cap would normally go, and then twists into the top of the main blender.
See: big bag of delicious frozen fruit, Alpro’s Almond Milk (I’m currently enjoying the ‘unsweetened’ version), and my measuring cups. This almond milk stands at 24 calories per 100ml (i.e. nothing, check out its rad nutritional benefits too).
Chuck all that fruit in! (I put the fruit in first to avoid the plunk-splash of fruit-into-milk, and use my measuring cups or guesstimation, rather than the measuring points on the side of the drink bottle)
I used a cup and a half of almond milk in this smoothie: 354ml, which is about 85 calories. Fruit is a little harder to measure calorie wise, and if you’re interested then you should weigh your fruit (minus peel and stones/pits etc.) before putting it in.
Now press that ‘BLEND’ button!
Beautiful, delicious mush!
Right after blending it’s pretty easy to pour your drink into a glass, or if you’re on the go, obviously it’s simplest to just use the sports bottle.
Enjoy :3
Definitely going to be sharing quick posts about my latest trials and errors with smoothie making. Really pleasantly surprised with how well this first attempt went!
hello friend, it's me, katya 