Vegan Mixed Berry Smoothie

Why This Recipe Works

Making a smoothie is easy, but we didn't want our vegan smoothies to just taste great—they had to be filling enough to call them breakfast, too. Our task would be determining how to add protein to fresh, bright-tasting shakes to keep us going. We chose three flavor profiles so we could regularly add smoothies to our weekday breakfast rotation. The sweet-tart mix of berries and bananas made a classic smoothie that pleased everyone. A feel-good “green” smoothie with kale and pineapple tasted great while also making us feel virtuous. And a smoothie with mango, pineapple, and banana transported us to a tropical island—a welcome destination first thing in the morning. For a creamy texture in our two fruit smoothies, we blended them with mild-flavored coconut milk yogurt. And for our green smoothie, rich, nutritious, and subtly sweet avocado fit the bill. We tried every protein add-in imaginable, from commonly used almond butter to the new and novel, like cannellini beans. We wanted something that packed a nutritional punch but wouldn't overwhelm the flavor of our smoothies. Unsurprisingly, the beans made our smoothies taste bland and starchy. Almond butter and wheat germ were good, but we ultimately came away with a favorite that worked with any flavor combination we threw at it, and it was a surprise: hemp seed hearts. The hulled center of the hemp seed, a soft, almost waxy nugget, blended beautifully into our drink, leaving just a trace of pleasantly grassy, sweet flavor.