60-SECOND CHOCOLATE SUPER SHAKE
If you serve this to your kids for breakfast, they may think you have lost your marbles and have given up on healthy food! This outstanding breakfast shake provides highly nutritious, blood sugar balancing and brain-boosting ingredients to keep your child focused and full all the way to lunchtime. This shake is also a superb pick-me-up after a long school day. The best part is that it will take 60 seconds to whiz up in a blender.
I have used cashew butter from Biona in this recipe, but you can use any nut butter (peanuts are not strictly nuts and are prone to aflatoxin, so they are best avoided). If you have a nut allergy, pumpkin butter or tahini (or half of each) works equally well. You can use water instead of plant-based milk, but I like the creaminess that comes from almond or homemade cashew milk. Please see our Ultimate Guide to the Best Dairy-Free Milk for inspiration.
Raw Organic Cacao is the highest plant-based source of iron available, but given this is a non-animal-based iron (also known as non-heme), it needs some vitamin C for the iron to get absorbed by our bodies. For this reason, I have added a kiwi fruit to the recipe, but you can replace it with a large clementine or medium-sized orange or 1/2 a cup of peeled papaya and in the summer, a handful of strawberries will do the job very nicely. If you want a sweeter flavour, add 2 to 4 large soft Medjool dates to give a lovely caramel flavour and keep even the sweetest tooth blissfully happy.
Enjoy!
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp cashew butter
- 2 frozen bananas
- 2 tbsp raw cacao powder
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 cup plant based milk
- 1 medium peeled kiwi
- 1 tbsp raw shelled hemp seeds
Instructions
- place all the ingredients in a blender and whiz until smooth.
THE SCIENCE BIT
The fat in CASHEWS is almost entirely made of oleic acid (found in olive oil) with strong anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. Raw organic CACAO has over 40 times the antioxidants of blueberries and is the highest plant-based source available, at a whopping 7.3mg per 100g. This compares to beef and lamb at 2.5mg, and spinach at 3.6mg. CACAO is also one of the highest plant-based sources of magnesium, the most deficient mineral in the western world. Magnesium is important for a healthy heart, and helps turn glucose into energy enabling your brain to work with laser-sharp clarity and focus. One of the more surprising facts is that raw CACAO has more calcium than cow’s milk, at 160mg per 100g vs 125mg per 100ml of milk. CACAO contains a large number of agents that increase the production of several feel-good chemicals in the brain such as dopamine and serotonin and may possibly be the reason why we reach out for a chocolate bar when we are feeling low or stressed! Hemps seeds are packed with protein and omega 3 fatty acids for healthy brain function.
