Purple Hawaiian Dream Smoothie Date Sweetened

Mysteriously seductive, packed with antioxidants and a symphony of plant-based nutrients, the purple hue comes from blueberries and cooked purple sweet potatoes or ube. Pineapple, coconut extract and ground ginger impart warm breezy tropical vibes, while vanilla and cardamom add delicate and beguiling floral notes. Whole dates make this smoothie lusciously sweet.

DREAMING UP A DREAMY SMOOTHIE

This smoothie recipe was inspired by a vegan pie I had at a local bakery. The pie was called Blue Hawaii Pie and consisted of a combination of blueberries, pineapple and coconut. The flavors really did remind me of the Hawaiian islands and the harmonious magic of aloha. As a whole food vegan I’m pretty strict about avoiding refined sweeteners and added fats. Occasionally, when out and about, I allow myself to stray, and when I do I usually find things overly sweet, and often overly oily too. That’s how I felt about this pie—too sweet and too rich for my whole food plant-based tastebuds, but memorably delicious none the less! Something about the combination of coconut, pineapple and blueberries sparked my foodie imagination and eventually I came up with a healthy whole food plant-based (WFPB) smoothie that’s an homage to that lovely, though not so healthy, pie. I describe this smoothie as purple instead of blue because that’s the actual color, and because it’s made with cooked purple sweet potatoes. By incorporating whole dates I can get things as sweet as I like while staying WFPB compliant and adding even more nutrients. A very small quantity of dates are needed because most of the other ingredients are already quite sweet. I adore the floral bouquet of cardamom in fruity recipes. Vanilla accentuates the floral notes of the cardamom, while ground ginger is a health promoting way to add tropical warmth. I use coconut extract as a way to include the inimitable flavor of coconut without the high amounts of saturated fat found in whole coconut and other coconut derived foods.

PURPLE SWEET POTATOES & ALTERNATIVES

Let’s talk sweet potatoes. Incorporating cooked sweet potatoes and yams into my smoothies has been a game changer for me. It’s a great way to add a ton of nutrients and sweetness. Cooked sweet potatoes and yams also give smoothies a velvety creaminess. If you’re trying to avoid using bananas in your smoothies because bananas may interfere with your body’s ability to absorb certain antioxidants, sweet potatoes and yams are the perfect banana alternative. And like bananas, sweet potatoes and yams are a great source of potassium.

Purple sweet potatoes and ube yams have a nutritional edge over all other tubers. That’s largely because the beautiful purple color results from a high concentration of anthocyanins, the same antioxidants found in deeply colored fruits like blueberries, grapes and purple cabbage. In this smoothie, cooked purple sweet potatoes or ube yams enhance the aesthetic appeal and heighten the antioxidant boost.

But if you can’t get purple sweet potatoes or ube yams, you can still make this smoothie!

My favorite substitution for cooked purple sweet potatoes or ube yams would be cooked Japanese Matsutake or Beni Haruka sweet potatoes because they’re incredibly sweet and flavorful and, although they don’t add to the intense purple color of the smoothies, they also don’t detract from it.

Any cooked sweet potato or yam would still be delicious in this smoothie. If you use orange colored sweet potatoes or yams, your smoothie will end up looking more brown than purple, but it will still taste great.

Another possibility is to use bananas instead which wouldn’t have as much of a negative impact on the color.

BLUEBERRY MAGIC

Fresh or frozen blueberries work equally well in this smoothie. Frozen blueberries are usually often less expensive, especially when fresh blueberries don’t grow, or aren’t in season, in your part of the world. Wild blueberries have significantly higher levels of antioxidants than regular ones. If the health benefits of blueberries is what motivates your blueberry consumption, and you don’t mind paying a little more for them, then it’s better to get wild blueberries if they’re available to you. There’s so much research about the health benefits of blueberries that an entire book could be written on this topic alone, never mind all there is to say about their juicy deliciousness.

PINEAPPLE OPTIONS

Sweet fresh or frozen pineapple chunks would work equally well in this recipe. You could get away with using strained canned pineapple, but I think that would be a little less good. What’s most important is that the pineapple you use should be sweet and juicy. I’d rather have canned pineapple in this smoothie than fresh pineapple that’s not quite ripe enough.

DATES AS A WFPB SUGAR SUBSTITUTE

Nearly all of my sweet recipes get much of their sweetness from whole dried fruits, and my go to dried fruits for sweetening recipes are dates. The intensely sweet caramel-like flavor of dates blends seamlessly with other ingredients. Dates add fiber and nutrients while also working as a thickening agent. From a nutritional standpoint, dates are a whole plant food packed with fiber and a symphony of other nutrients.

CHOOSING & PREPPING DATES

My favorite dates for baking are pitted Deglet Noor because they are sweet, flavorful, widely available and usually soft and moist. You can also use other kinds of dates by prepping and measuring them in the same way as you would Deglet Noor.

When using dates in recipes I always begin by slicing them. I have found that dates that are supposedly pitted are, in fact, usually not all pitted. Pre-slicing my dates gives me the opportunity to remove any hidden pits and hard stems that may still be attached. In recipes like this one where the dates will be processed in a blender or food processor, slicing the dates allows them to be processed more quickly and effectively. Slicing dates also allows for greater consistency when measuring. Once the dates are sliced they can be pressed into measuring cups or spoons.

LEAFY GREENS ARE OPTIONAL

One of the things I love about smoothies is that they give me a chance to get more leafy greens into my body quickly and easily. Most of the time, and especially in sweet flavorful smoothies like this one, I can barely taste the greens. The only drawback to adding greens to a smoothie, aside from the slight change in flavor, is that it can make a smoothie less pretty, sometimes to the point of looking like mud of freshly poured concrete. Of course that’s not an issue if you’re making a green smoothie.

In this particular smoothie the greens only partly detract from the aesthetic, making the purple just a little less vibrant without turning the whole thing brown. That is unless you’re using orange yams instead of a purple tuber, in which case your smoothie is already going to be pretty smoothie looking.

In the end, it’s up to you. Add any greens you like. I usually go for baby arugula or baby kale. But anything will work—spinach, lettuce, watercress. You name it!

QUANTITIES ARE FLEXIBLE

If followed exactly, this recipe makes approximately 32 ounces. That would be 2 large smoothies, 16 ounces each; 3 medium smoothies, just over 10 ounces each; or 4 smallish smoothies, about 8 ounces each. But it’s impossible to be exact when measuring things like chopped fruit and leafy greens by volume so your results will inevitably vary.

Feel free to use more of one ingredient and less of another. For example, you could use a whole cup of cooked purple sweet potato and cut back on the blueberries. Or you could use more pineapple because you just love pineapple. Or manage the sweetness level by decreasing or increasing the chopped dates. Adjust the coconut extract to your liking, etc. You do you boo! I was feeling creative when I came up with this recipe and I want you to feel you can be creative too.

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