Name: Easy Chocolate Cherry Smoothie Recipe
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 2
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2 cups/200 g fresh or frozen cherries; 1-2 ripe bananas; 1 1/2 cups/350 ml unsweetened almond milk; 4 tbsp unsweetened cacao powder; 3 drops almond extract; Optional topping - cacao nibs; Maple syrup to taste

For a delicious and filling drink, try this easy chocolate cherry smoothie recipe. Using the most nutritious ingredients, this tasty almond milk chocolate smoothie will be a hit with both kids and adults.

Easy Chocolate Cherry Smoothie Recipe

You can make this smoothie as a drink or as a smoothie bowl. Just reduce the amount of almond milk if you’re making a smoothie bowl, so that it’s nice and thick.

How to Choose Cherries

You can use fresh or frozen cherries for this chocolate smoothie drink. Either way, they should be a vibrant red color and ideally quite sweet cherries rather than sour cherries.

The exact shade of cherry red doesn’t really matter, as long as the cherries are firm. If the cherries have stalks attached, these should be a bright green color.

For this particular cherry recipe, it doesn’t matter if the cherries are slightly blemished. Make sure to start the recipe within an hour of removing the cherries from the refrigerator, otherwise they’ll quickly lose their freshness.

How to Destone Cherries

Before destoning the cherries, rinse them in cold water and pat them dry with kitchen towel. There are a few ways to pit cherries.

The quickest solution is to use a special cherry stone removal tool like this one. We find it to be a real time saver.

It also has the advantage of having a Splatter Shield to protect your work surfaces. Cherry juice stains can be hard to remove!

If you don’t have a cherry pitter, try one of these solutions:

Push a chopstick through the stem end and the stone will come out on the other side of the cherry.
Unfold a paper clip, insert one end into a cherry and move it around the stone until it comes out.
Push the cherry onto a tilted piping tip and the stone will come out the other end.

What’s the Best Cocoa Powder for Smoothies?

For this smoothie drink, the best solution is to use either raw cacao powder or unsweetened cocoa powder. You could also use high quality baking chocolate.

We use an organic, fairtrade 100% cocoa powder. This gives a great intensity of flavor.

What’s the Best Protein for Smoothies?

This is really a matter of personal preference. If you have a sweet tooth, bananas are great.

Making a smoothie is also a good way of using up overripe bananas. The riper they are, the sweeter the smoothie will be.

This chocolate smoothie recipe already has several sources of protein: almond milk, bananas, cherries, cacao nibs and almond milk so it’s nice and filling. If you prefer, you can swap out the almond milk or banana for one of these options:

Chia seeds
Coconut or flaxseed milk
Collagen protein
Greek yogurt
Kale or spinach
Peanut butter
Pumpkin seeds

How to Blend a Smoothie

We find the easiest way is to use an immersion hand blender or mixer to make smoothies. You just have to be careful not to splash the mixture onto your work surfaces.

Keep the blender low down in the bowl or use a mixing bowl splatter guard to avoid any splashing. Alternatively, you can use a countertop blender or stand mixer.

Blitz the ingredients by slowly moving the blender around the bowl. Carry on until fully combined.

Blending chocolate banana smoothies — Blending a smoothie

Chocolate Cherry Smoothie Toppings

In our recipe, we topped this smoothie with cacao nibs. You can buy them ready made and they’re very nutritious.

Some other tasty chocolate smoothie topping ideas are:

Blueberries
Chocolate shavings
Granola
Raspberries
Shredded coconut
Strawberries

A healthy chocolate banana smoothie recipe — Easy chocolate cherry smoothie recipe

Here is the quick and easy chocolate banana smoothie recipe with the full ingredient list.