Creamy Date Shake

James Craig's Note:

This is a quick and easy pick me up drink. The recipe was originally published in the "Cooking Light" magazine. Cooking time is the actual time it takes to blend the items.

• Total Time: 6 mins
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Cook Time: 1 mins

Ingredients:

Yield: 4 cups

• 2 ¼ cups non-fat vanilla yogurt
• ¾ cup skim milk
• ½ cup chopped pitted dates
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 ice cubes

Directions:

1. Combine first 4 ingredients in a blender, and process until dates are finely chopped.
2. With the blender running, add ice cubes, 1 at a time and process until smooth.
3. Serve immediately.

Reviews

[MaiCan'tcook99]

I tried it and I did not like it, but my husband did.

[Nose]

The dates give a mellow, honey-sweet flavor that is nice with the creaminess. I'm thinking the ideal would be to use vanilla frozen yogurt instead of messing around with ice cubes. Blend the dates and milk until smooth and then add the frozen yogurt for a few seconds at the end. I arrived at this conclusion by doing some experimenting, because I had a lot of dates and dairy products I needed to use up. I made the recipe as described, except I had plain yogurt and added sugar and vanilla. Then I made another one with vanilla ice cream. Usually I like the tang of yogurt, but in this case I kind of preferred the pure sweetness of the ice cream one. It was a bit too rich, though. I'm guessing that frozen yogurt, which was not part of my experiment, would be good.