Naturally Sweet Peanut Butter Cup Smoothie: Secret Smoothie Ingredients, Part One

There's nothing I like more than pretending to be all healthy while satisfying my insanely sweet tooth. I will eat just about anything "healthy" if I can cover it in enough chocolate.

The fact that I don't really like fruit and can't stand bananas in particular means that I don't enjoy the average smoothie so very much.

It was in this way that I accidentally discovered my secret smoothie ingredients. They're so secret that you might not even want to tell yourself you're eating them.

In fact, what I did was test them all on my boy for a good few weeks before telling him what he was eating. Actually, I STILL haven't told him he spent the last half of his sophomore year eating Secret Ingredient #1. Or Secret Ingredient #2 for that matter. Luckily, he does not read my blog.

Ready? Here is secret ingredient #1. Don't worry, it only LOOKS threatening. It's actually quite harmless.

A year ago, I could barely stand to touch one of these things, much less eat one. I live in Texas and they just look a bit too much like a giant cockroach. But there you have it:

Dates are magic.

Their mere presence sweetens any smoothie and no one can tell they're even there!

The Peanut Butter Cup Smoothie is far from my favorite. It's more like, "That smoothie I make when we're fresh out of the stuff I usually use."

But you can't go wrong with chocolate and peanut butter. It's tasty and it only introduces ONE of the foods that I am suggesting maybe aren't quite as terrible as they've seemed to me for my entire life. So that's why I chose it to go first.

All I do is take about a cup and a half of almond milk, three tablespoons of peanut butter (I use the organic, nothing but peanuts kind), 2 tablespoons of cocoa, 2 tablespoons of honey, and 4 dates, and blend them in my grandmother's "vintage" blender.

And because the last thing I want to see in my chocolate is a fruit that looks like one of the aforementioned Texas residents, I blend them forever and ever. And ever.

If you happen to hear a clanking sound rather than a "happy blender" sound, it might be that you forgot to pit the dates. Don't worry - you can just put the whole smoothie through a strainer. There will be (hardly) any pit left in the delicious results!

Here's an honest to goodness recipe card, although this recipe barely requires one. Happy sort-of-like-healthy eating, and stay tuned for Secret Ingredient Number 2!

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