Vitamix Cherry Almond Vanilla Smoothie

Cherry Almond SmoothieIt’s cherry season, and I love cherries, so here’s a simple smoothie that highlights their great flavor. Cherries can go well with many combinations, but in this recipe I didn’t want to dilute their flavor. I just used cherries, almonds, and vanilla extract. You could make this with frozen cherries, which would save you the work of pitting them, but I used fresh cherries. I have an old cherry pitter that looks like this one that makes pitting easy. I also used peeled almonds to make it smoother.

1/2 cup water
1.5 cups pitted cherries
1/2 cup peeled almonds*
1 tsp vanilla extract
10 ice cubes

Yields ~2.5 cups of delicious cherry smoothie.

Blend on high until smooth (~60 seconds) and enjoy. I blended for a little extra time to get the almonds extra smooth. The power of a Vitamix or Blendtec is essential to get the almonds to a smooth consistency.

Depending on your taste and your cherries you may want to add a little sweetener, but for me cherries are usually plenty sweet.

I’ve been meaning to try vanilla pods, but I haven’t yet. They sound exciting, though less convenient than the extract.

Cherry season always ends too soon, so don’t delay! I found this handy chart that shows we are entering the peak of California cherry season, and there’s about a month to go. Luckily the season doesn’t end there; cherries from the Northwest are available through August. Of course you can always use frozen cherries, but I haven’t seen them at Trader Joe’s lately.

*To peel almonds I soak them overnight, and then pinch them out of their peel. Alternatively you could buy blanched and peeled almonds, or you could use almond milk and/or almond butter. Using almonds with skins would also work, but this is a more delicate recipe, so it’s nice to have the slightly smoother result.


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Comments

Vitamix Cherry Almond Vanilla Smoothie — 4 Comments

  1. Hi, just want to leave a feedback here to say how YUMMY this smoothie is. I would have never thought of this recipe myself. A few notes: 1) I didn’t peel the almond skin but I did as you suggested, blend the almond with water first before adding the rest and it comes out perfect with a Vitamix. 2) I went on youtube to learn the best way to pit the cherries. I invented the “cutting a small slit on top then smashing” method to be fastest for my purpose (since I don’t care about the aesthetic of the cherries and it retain more juice by cutting a slit first). Happy blending! CH

  2. Just made this with variations of what I had on hand. Used coconut water that actually had pieces of meat in it, cherries and hazelnuts. Also used 1/2 vanilla bean pod. Tastes good.

  3. I had to use frozen dark cherries when trying this last night. My Blendtec had troubles grinding this one out as directed, so I added a tad more water and then a little almond milk because it was was still too thick. In the end, the concoction was utterly gross to my pallet, so it got tossed. YMMV

    • If you sub in frozen cherries you should modify the recipe to use water instead of ice — otherwise it will be more sorbet than smoothie (and sorbet is trickier to blend — usually you need to make more at once). It’s hard for me to imagine what could go wrong with the flavors, unless you just don’t like cherries, almonds, or vanilla. I suppose if you added too much vanilla (or used an ultra-concentrate), that could make it a bit unpalatable. If I were to make something and the vanilla flavor was too strong I would add some more ingredients to dilute the vanilla flavor. Or you could add sweetener if you have a sweet tooth.

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