Name: Tropical cauliflower smoothie
Prep time: 5 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 100 g cauliflower (broken into florets); 1 ripe banana (fresh or frozen); 150 g mixed tropical fruit (pineapple, papaya, mango (mine was frozen)); 300 ml orange juice; 1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

A delicious recipe for tropical fruits and cauliflower smoothie. A great way to get children to eat a portion of hidden vegetables.

A cauliflower smoothie? Have I finally taken this sneaky veg malarky too far? Actually I’m not alone. It turns out that cauliflower smoothies are a “thing” at the moment and I say why not? It’s not that different to including kale or spinach in a smoothie after all and my kids are much more likely to drink a yellow smoothie than a green one.

As you’ll know if you’ve been here before my kids aren’t very good at eating their vegetables. I’ve tried every strategy I can think of to get my picky eaters to eat their veggies with mixed results. I now tend to adopt an hands off approach – I serve up the vegetables and the kids decide whether to eat them or not. You can probably guess what they decide. Although of course, just to be difficult I have a toddler who is the opposite to his older siblings and eats up all his veg!

Because I would prefer that they ate some vegetables rather than go through their entire childhood without consuming any I do create hidden vegetable recipes to serve up to them. This cauliflower smoothie is one such recipe. It was a huge hit with my kids, especially my picky seven-year-old who doesn’t eat any fruit or vegetables.

Nom Nom Kids reusable smoothie pouches

I used our Nom Nom Kids pouches* to give these to the kids. They are like the pouches that you can buy baby food and fruit purées in but they are re-usuable and allow you to make your own homemade smoothies and baby food. They come in two sizes. I bought the larger ones for my kids and I genuinely think that this is a brilliant product.

My go-to gadget for making smoothies these days is my Froothie Optimum Nutri Force Extractor*. I love this even more than my Froothie G2.3 blender. The G2.3 blender is a fantastic gadget and has so many uses (it can even make soup – from scratch!) but for my every day use the Nutriforce Extractor is even better.

The Froothie Nutriforce Extractor

There are several reasons for this. First of all it takes up much less space in the kitchen. We have quite narrow work tops and our cupboards don’t leave a lot of space free for equipment to be left out on the work surface. The Nutriforce Exractor takes up much less space than my larger blender meaning that I can leave it out without it getting in the way.

Smoothies are the number one reason I need a blender. Because I have a child who doesn’t eat any fresh fruit or vegetables we make homemade smoothies nearly every day. This blender makes perfect smoothies in under a minute – there were no unblended bits of cauliflower to be seen!

The Nutriforce Extractor comes with a second, smaller cup which can be used for grinding. I used this to grind up some chia seeds for some vegan baking I was doing and the results were better and faster than anything I’ve ever tried before.

If you buy a Nutriforce Extractor you’ll get two cups: a 1 litre cup and a 450ml cup. There are two separate blades – an extractor blade for smoothies and a grinder blade. There are also two storage lids, a flip-top lid and a travel handle so you can take your smoothies out and about with you.

This blender is small enough that if you were going on holiday in the UK with your car you could take it along with you to use while you’re away.

The Froothie Optimum Nutri Force Extractor* costs £179 but at the time of publication is available for just £99 – a saving of £80.

If you’d like a second opinion on the Nutri Force Extractor read this review by Farmersgirl Kitchen or this one by Tin and Thyme.

Here’s how to make a tropical cauliflower smoothie: