Chocolate Zucchini Smoothie

A chocolate zucchini smoothie with fresh zucchini, layered with a creamy vanilla smoothie, topped with chocolate. Creamy like a milk shake, dairy free, vegan and gluten-free, and a no banana smoothie.

Chocolate Zucchini Smoothie

This chocolate zucchini smoothie is super easy to make, with simple ingredients, and hidden zucchini. It's one of the most chocolate-y, energy-boosting smoothies I have ever made! A patchwork of chocolate protein, cinnamon-dusted vanilla cream and topped with mood boosting chocolate.

How to Make A Chocolate Zucchini Smoothie

To make this awesome healthy smoothie, you'll actually make two smoothies, a vanilla and chocolate.

You'll actually make two smoothies, a chocolate smoothie and a creamy vanilla smoothie.

To make the chocolate smoothie, combine cocoa powder, milk, maple syrup, coffee, chopped frozen zucchini and hemp hearts in a blender and process until creamy.

To make the creamy vanilla smoothie, soak raw cashews in water overnight, rinse and blend with maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon. That's your vanilla smoothie!
Pour the two in a glass and top with chocolate!

Toppings for This Chocolate Zucchini Smoothie

Topped with any chocolate bar or any of my healthy simple chocolate treats. Here are some glorious possibilities at hand:

1. Brownie Bites

2. Black Pepper Chocolate Truffles

3. 3-Ingredient Chocolate Crunch Bars

4. Dark Chocolate Zucchini Cake (what, no! not a cake, haha)

If not these recipes, plop in your favorite chocolate something-or-other and you have the perfect chocolate-y dessert for breakfast or a replenishing post-workout snack. A reader once told me she got superpowers after drinking this!😍

One ingredient behind the nutrition in this chocolate smoothie recipe is the zucchini.

Why Add Zucchini to a Smoothie?

Well, one reason is to thicken it! Other smoothie thickeners of course are bananas (which also sweeten), tofu, yogurt and thick fruits such as mango and banana (also sweeteners).

But sometimes you want a thickener that doesn't add its flavor and that is zucchini! Perfect when you are going for chocolate or more delicate flavors such as passion-fruit and lavender and more.

Zucchini, also known as "courgette", also contributes nutrition, including fiber, vitamins B6, riboflavin, folate, C, and K, potassium and manganese.

To this smoothie, I added the zucchini raw and frozen, but steaming it first and freezing is fine too. The interesting characteristic of zucchini is the nutrition level does not drop much after cooking

One aspect of zucchini is it is on the "dirty" list with the ewg.org which means it typically the skin absorbs too much insecticide to be healthy when grown NOT organic.

So you either peel a non-organic zucchini, or you buy an organic zucchini and keep the skin on.

I hope you love this simple protein smoothie.

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Chocolate Zucchini Smoothie

Created by Dee Dine

A chocolate zucchini smoothie with fresh zucchini, layered with a creamy vanilla smoothie, topped with chocolate. Creamy like a milk shake, dairy free, vegan and gluten-free, and a no banana smoothie.

5 from 5 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 1 d

Cook Time 5 mins

Total Time 1 d 5 mins

Cuisine vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free

Servings 2

Ingredients

 

US Customary - Metric

Chocolate Smoothie

• ¼ cup cocoa powder
• 1 ¼ cup dairy free milk
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• ¼ cup slushy coffee (freeze to slush in ice cube trays)
• ½ frozen zucchini (organic, chopped, frozen)
• 1 tbsp hemp hearts optional

Cinnamon Cashew Cream

• 1 cup cashews (unsalted and unroasted, soaked overnight in water, rinsed)
• ¼ cup water
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsps cinnamon

Optional Toppings

• 1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

 

Prep

• Put cashews in a measuring cup, fill the cup with clean water and refrigerate overnight. Next day, rinse cashews, and they are ready to use.
• Put coffee, preferably concentrated or strong, in ice cube tray, and freeze for 1-2 hours. If you freeze overnight, let them sit out the next day to thaw until slushy for the recipe. You don't need them to be brick-hard.
• Peel zucchini, chop in chunks and freeze overnight.

  OR

  Don't peel the zucchini to retain the fiber and nutrients that come in the peel, and chop and freeze. HOWEVER, if you keep the peel, you must buy organic because zucchini is considered to absorb high level of pesticides when not grown organic as per EWG.org dirty and clean produce lists. Also, keeping the peel might mean you'll have green flecks in your chocolate smoothie, but so what, right?

Make Cream Smoothie

• Blend soaked cashews, maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon into a creamy smoothie.

Combine

• Melt ¾ cup of the chocolate chips in microwave fro 1 minute. Spread patches of melted chocolate on sides of 2 jars.
• Pour cream smoothie into one side of jar, and the chocolate smoothie into the other.
• Top with remainder of chips. Drink within 24 hours.

Nutrition

Calories: 180kcalCarbohydrates: 33gProtein: 7gFat: 4gSaturated Fat: 1gSodium: 80mgPotassium: 449mgFiber: 5gSugar: 22gVitamin A: 586IUVitamin C: 11mgCalcium: 274mgIron: 2mg

Keyword chocolate zucchini smoothie, zucchini smoothie

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Dee Dine

Dee Dine is founder of Green Smoothie Gourmet, a plant based recipe blog, and author of the recent cookbook, Crazy Healthy with 4 Ingredients and another immunity-boosting smoothie shot book, 4-Ingredient Smoothies + Juices , due out in January 2021. On this blog you'll find incredibly easy recipes with hidden veggies for anyone wanting to eat healthier, regardless of diet. Dee has graduate degrees in sciences and  journalism, editor at The Feedfeed and a nutritional expert at WikiHow. More about Dee Dine here.