Frosty Fail

Many of us go through spurts where we try to be more healthy, maybe shed a few pounds, get stronger, boost our metabolism, all that good stuff, but many of us don't want to give up those foods we love most. What do we do? We try to find healthy "substitutes." Sometimes it works, but in my experience the substitute recipes usually are a grave disappointment because we have the real thing in our head. Today's Pinstrosity runs exactly along those lines. Dieting but craving a Wendy's Frosty? Don't try this at home, according to pinner Cecillie.

The Original Pin

(via)

The ingredients and directions are as follows:

3/4 cup Almond Milk
about 15 ice cubes
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1-2 Tbsp unsweetened Cocoa powder
1/3 of a Banana

Directions:

1. Blend.
2. Enjoy.

Cecillie had a little bit of trouble with that last step. 

The Pinstrosity

She said, "I LOVE Wendy's Frosties. They are smooth & creamy & just all around yummy. I bought all the ingredients. I followed all the directions. It tasted just like unsweetened cocoa powder mixed with cold water, with a hint of banana aftertaste. ugh. I don't much like banana flavor anyway but had used the banana because it was part of the recipe. I tried adding more vanilla flavoring. nope. I tried adding about 1 cup of vanilla ice cream. still no. Out of desperation (and trying to make it smooth & creamy like a frosty) I added about 1/2 a cup of greek yogurt. I had just seen a post about a "healthy shamrock shake" using cottage cheese, but they said you could use greek yogurt instead, to give it the shake consistency. I won't be trying that one either. I'm going to slit open a Frozen Hard Lemonade instead... and look for recipes that use unsweetened cocoa powder or almond milk, since this is the first time in my life I've bought these items & now they are probably going to go to waste. And now I have more dishes to do. FAIL."

I'm not a fan of bananas in drinks either (not to mention I'm now allergic to them), but bananas are often used in smoothies and blended health drinks to add some sweetness and to give the concoction a more smooth consistency. In smoothies it works where there are other fruit sugars. When it is all alone against the powers of unsweetened cocoa, vanilla, almond milk, and yogurt...one-third of a banana has pretty weak sweetening powers. On top of your sweetening issues is the consistency problem. You need something thick in there to combat the almond milk (again, one-third of a banana isn't going to do much). 

My tips:

• Use at least one whole banana, maybe two if you want to try to make the original ingredient list work. But, that would give it a much stronger banana taste which means much less like a Frosty. 
• Try kefir instead of almond milk. It is thicker, creamier, and still healthy. You can get unsweetened, unflavored kefir in the dairy section of most grocery stores. 
• If it still is weirdly not sweet at all, but you still want to go healthy, you may try Truvia. Truvia is derived from the stevia plant, which is a natural sweetener. Warning...you only need a pinch or two...this stuff has some major sweetening power in it. 
• Buy a Frosty.