Monday, January 20, 2014

Healthy Alternative to Wendy's Frosty?

I've seen this post from MealsandMovesBlog.com make the rounds on Pinterest and Facebook claiming to be a healthy alternative to a Wendy's Frosty and when I repinned the post, the only ingredients listed were:

1. 3/4C of almond milk
2. 1/3 of a banana
3. 15 ice cubes
4. 1-2 Tbs. of unsweetened cocoa powder
5. 1/2 tsp. of vanilla (though the original post says 1 scoop of vanilla protein powder, which I wouldn't have had anyway).

One important thing to note is that I didn't include two ingredients that the post recommends and to be honest, I wouldn't know what other recipes to use them in anyway (I think they're available at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's). They recommend:

1. 1/4 tsp of xanthan gum and
2. 1/4 tsp of guar gum (or more xanathan if you don't have guar. All I can think about is the band... ahem... anyway...)

So with that in mind, I gave this a try. I added all the ingredients to my blender.


And gave it a whirl for a couple minutes.


My husband and I tried it and we both came to the conclusion that this tastes like... well... ice mixed with cocoa powder. It's not sweet at all. If you're expecting it to taste like a Frosty, like we did, you will be sorely mistaken. This definitely needs something sweet - maybe chocolate syrup, sugar, honey, SOMETHING to give it flavor! If you do give it a shot, maybe the xanthan gum is the key to making this taste great but without it... well... just grab a couple bucks and head to Wendy's. You'll be better off.

TOTAL COSTS: About $3
$.69/pound for bananas
$2.59 for almond milk
Vanilla, cocoa powder, and ice cubes on hand

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 6 minutes
4 minutes to add all the ingredients
2 minutes to blend together in a Vitamix

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
It's not hard to add everything in a blender - the hardest task might be finding all the ingredients!

1 comment:

  1. Xantham and Guar are thickeners, not sweeteners - it's the protein powder which gives you the sugar (usually fake), a lot of those puppies come in flavors like Oreo, etc., so they're definitely pre-flavored. Basically, anything with ice and sugar and chocolate works when it's hot. I'm much less inclined to experiment now!

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