Banana and honey shake
Two spoons of yoghurt and a ripe banana, blended smooth
Scales by the glass, though a blender copes better with two portions at once than with one, which barely covers the blades.
A properly ripe banana, the kind with more brown speckling than yellow on the skin, blends into a milkshake with almost no help from anything else. Whole milk loosens it to a drinkable thickness, a couple of spoons of smooth yoghurt add body, and honey rounds off the flavour without needing any other fruit. A tablespoon of milk powder stirred in disappears completely and turns a snack into something closer to a small meal. Keep the yoghurt to a variety with nothing folded through it, since fruit-and-seed yoghurt undoes the point of blending so carefully.
Ingredients
Contains: Milk
- 1ripe banana, peeled and broken into chunks
- 200 mlwhole milk
- 2 tbspsmooth yoghurt, no bits or fruit pieces
- 1 tbsphoney
- 1 tbspskimmed milk powder — optional
Method
Put the banana, milk, yoghurt and honey into a blender, along with the milk powder if you are using it.
Blend for 20 to 30 seconds, until completely smooth with no lumps of banana left.
Pour into a glass and drink straightaway, before the banana has time to thicken it further.
Watch-points
- Use a banana that is properly ripe, with plenty of brown speckling on the skin. A greener banana is starchier and does not blend as smoothly.
- Use a smooth yoghurt with nothing folded through it, no fruit pieces, nuts or seeds.
Stoma note: Ripe banana and yoghurt both tend to thicken stoma output, though a sweeter drink like this can loosen it again if you have much of it at once.
Make it more nourishing
- Use a second tablespoon of milk powder, for about 4 g more protein and 45 kcal with no more volume in the glass.
- Swap the yoghurt for 2 tablespoons of mascarpone, which thickens the shake and adds about 120 kcal.
- Stir in 2 tablespoons of double cream at the end, for roughly another 135 kcal.
Swaps
- Instead of honey, use golden syrup or seedless jam
- any of the three sweetens the same way
The foods in this recipe
Each of these has a page of its own, with how to prepare it and where hospitals differ.