Chocolate peanut butter shake in a 350 ml bottle
About 4 minutes · 1 bottle (350 ml)
This is the richest recipe here and the one that asks most of a small blender, because nut butter is heavy, sticky and does not want to move. Handled the right way it blends cleanly in two cycles; handled the wrong way it welds itself to the blade housing and you spend longer cleaning than drinking.
Ingredients
- 180 ml milk of any kind
- 1 heaped tsp unsweetened cocoa
- 1 ripe banana, fresh or frozen, in thick slices
- 1 heaped tsp smooth peanut butter
Step by step
- Milk first. Pour the milk into the empty bottle before any powder or butter goes near the blades.
- Cocoa onto the liquid. Add the cocoa on top of the milk so it wets immediately rather than caking.
- Banana, then peanut butter last. Add the banana slices, then drop the peanut butter on top of everything so it is drawn down gradually.
- First cycle, then shake. Seat the bottle and double-click. When it stops, lift it off and shake hard upside down.
- Second cycle. Set it back on and run one more cycle. If it is still streaky, add 30 ml more milk and run a third.
Never put nut butter in first
A spoon of peanut butter dropped onto dry blades sticks to them, and once it has stuck the blades spin inside a shell of it. The mixture above never reaches them and you get milk on top and a solid plug at the bottom.
Liquid first, then cocoa, then the banana, then the peanut butter last, sitting on top of everything. From there it gets drawn down gradually into a mixture that is already moving, which is exactly what you want.
Which peanut butter
Smooth blends more easily than crunchy, and a runnier natural butter blends more easily than a stiff one. If yours is stiff from the fridge, take it out ten minutes before or stir it first — a cold, solid spoonful is the hardest case.
Crunchy works but the pieces stay recognisable after two cycles, which some people want. Any nut butter behaves the same way: almond, cashew and tahini all follow the same rule about going in last.
Cocoa versus chocolate powder
Unsweetened cocoa gives a darker, less sweet drink and lets the banana do the sweetening. Drinking chocolate is mostly sugar and will make this very sweet indeed on top of a ripe banana.
Cocoa is a fine powder and cakes as readily as protein powder does, so it goes onto the liquid, never onto dry blades. A heaped teaspoon is enough for 350 ml.
Two cycles with a shake
Seat the bottle and double-click for the first 30-second cycle. Lift it off, shake it hard upside down, set it back on and run a second. The shake pulls the peanut butter down off the shoulder of the bottle where the first cycle will have pushed it.
Two cycles is almost always right. If it is still streaky after that, add 30 ml more milk and run one more — streaks usually mean the mixture is too thick to circulate rather than under-blended.
Adjusting the thickness
This is meant to be thick enough to need a proper mouthful rather than a sip. If that is too much, take the peanut butter down to a level teaspoon and put the milk up to 200 ml.
Going the other way, a frozen banana instead of a fresh one makes it noticeably thicker and colder without changing anything else. That is the version worth making in summer.
Cleaning up
Oil and cocoa together are the hardest residue to shift once dry, and the blade housing is where it collects. Rinse this one immediately — not in ten minutes.
Hot water, a proper squeeze of dish soap, one 30-second cycle, then unscrew the base and rinse the blade side under the hot tap. This is the one recipe where hot rather than warm water is worth it, because the residue is fat.