Vegan Chocolate Prune Smoothie

This vegan chocolate prune smoothie is as delicious as it is easy to blend up. The prune juice smoothie breakfast is ready in minutes! that’s ready in minutes!

Love an easy breakfast smoothie recipe? Give this vegan chocolate prune juice recipe a try. It takes just minutes to blend up.

And ahem, we’re going to talk about something really sexy: constipation! Drinking prune juice—on its own or in recipes like this prune smoothie—can be wonderful for your digestive health. Let’s make 2022 the year we say goodbye to being backed up!

Thank you to Sunsweet for sponsoring this blog post. All opinions are my own, as always.

Ingredients

Want to whip up this prune juice smoothie in your own kitchen? Here are the ingredients I used to make the easy chocolate prune smoothie:

Prune juice

The main ingredient in this prune juice smoothie is prune juice—no surprise there! I love drinking 100 percent prune juice and cooking with it.

Why? The juice contains no added sugar at all. And it boasts many benefits, especially gut health. I love to use prune juice in anything from a smoothie to virgin sangria to salad dressing to homemade jam.

Each eight-ounce serving of prune juice provides four grams of fiber, making it a good source. This includes both soluble and insoluble fiber—you need both for healthy digestion.

Soluble fiber soaks up water as it moves through your body, helping to bulk up your stool and prevent constipation.

And insoluble fiber helps get things moving through your digestive system, which also helps bulk up your stool. This ultimately helps stool to pass, which also helps prevent constipation.

In a study in Clinical Nutrition, healthy adults consumed either prunes with water or just water daily. The eating prunes with water people had increased stool weight, as well as increased stool frequency, compared to people not eating prunes.

I know we all like to have healthy digestion and regularity because it helps keep our bodies healthy—but it also helps keep our emotional health high.

I also like to recommend prune juice to pregnant women who are suffering from constipation, as they may not have much of an appetite.

In addition to fiber, prune juice contains sorbitol. This is a naturally occurring sugar alcohol that helps draw water into your small intestine to help get things moving.

As well, each serving of prune juice provides five essential vitamins and minerals—it’s a good source of potassium, riboflavin, vitamin B6, copper, and niacin—to help balance and maintain your digestive health to help you feel your best.

Frozen dark sweet cherries

You’ll want to buy unsweetened frozen cherries for this smoothie recipe. I love using frozen fruit in smoothies because doing so removes the need for ice.

Plus, sweet cherries boast serotonin, a hormone that helps lower stress and improve mood. Cherries also contain phenolics, compounds that can help lower blood pressure by reducing tension in your body’s blood vessel walls.

Prunes

As you probably know by now, I love prunes. Just like prune juice, eating them provides many health benefits. Indeed, prunes boast many bone-helping vitamins and minerals, including potassium, vitamin K, phosphorous, and boron.

And just like the other fruit in this smoothie, the prunes provide a natural sweetness.

Banana

This fruit is a go-to for smoothies because ripe bananas are full of naturally occurring sugar that sweetens a smoothie without the need for adding any sugar. Plus, fruit is hydrating and provides water—a banana is 75 percent water!

Cashew milk yogurt

I like using cashew milk yogurt in vegan smoothie recipes because the yogurt has more of a buttery taste than a nutty one. Plus, it’s a great way to add protein to a fruit-based smoothie.

Per eight-ounce serving, the yogurt contains 3 grams of plant-based protein.

Cashew butter

We might as well stick with the cashew theme, right? I like to shop for a natural cashew butter that contains just dry-roasted cashews and nothing else, not even any added sugar.

The nut butter provides a trio of plant protein, fiber, and healthy fats to help keep you fuller for longer. Plus, eating cashews may benefit your weight.

A review study in Obesity Reviews found that eating more nuts is connected with decreases in both weight and waist circumference. The research included a large assortment of nuts—including cashews, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, and peanuts.

Unsweetened cocoa powder

Cocoa powder is one of my favorite “secret” ingredients for whipping up sweet recipes with no added sugar. That’s right, cocoa powder—if you buy the unsweetened kind—contains no sugar at all. Plus, it’s loaded with antioxidants, which offer many benefits.

In fact, in a study in Journal of Nutrition, older adults who ate flavonoid-rich foods including chocolate, wine, or tea scored better on cognitive tests.

Step-by-step instructions

Whipping up this prune juice smoothie is really easy: Simply add all the ingredients to a blender, close the blender lid, and blend!

The recipe makes about 24 ounces of smoothie, which is definitely enough for two servings. Hint: I gave the second helping of my batch to my husband.

The night before you plan to make your smoothie, peel a ripe banana, slice it, and place it in a freezer-safe zip-top bag. Freeze it overnight.

This is the only ingredient that you need to prepare ahead of time. If you forget to do this, though, no worries: Just add a little bit of ice to the recipe.

For blending up the smoothie, I prefer to use a high-speed blender. But any blender will do.

If you’re using a blender that isn’t high speed, you may want to place your chunkier ingredients—the banana slices, prunes, and frozen cherries—at the bottom of the blender so they are closer to the blade.

If you’re using a high-speed blender, the order of ingredients doesn’t matter.

Once all the ingredients have been added to the blender, close the lid, and blend! My blender has a “smoothie” setting, but if yours doesn’t simply blend until all ingredients are liquified.

Nutrition

Here’s an overview of the nutrients you’ll get from a serving, including the daily values (DVs) per serving:

• Calories: 360
• Fat: 10 g (13% DV)
• Saturated fat: 2.5 g (13% DV)
• Carbs: 65 g (24% DV)
• Fiber: 7 g (25% DV)
• Sugar: 35 g
• Protein: 7 g (14% DV)
• Sodium: 75 mg (3% DV)
• Cholesterol: 65 mg (0% DV)
• Iron: 2 mg (10% DV)
• Potassium: 725 mg (15% DV)

This smoothie is a good source of protein and an excellent source of fiber. Both of these nutrients help to keep you fuller for longer. It’s also a good source of the minerals iron and potassium—and it’s low in sodium and cholesterol.

Recipe FAQ

More vegan smoothie recipes

If you love vegan smoothies, give these other recipes a try, as well:

• Vegan Wild Blueberry Cauliflower Smoothie
• Avocado Smoothie with Grape Juice
• Vegan Coconut and Mandarin Orange Smoothie Bowl

Sources

• A study in Clinical Nutrition
• A review study in Obesity Review
• A study in Journal of Nutrition