Raspberry Smoothie (incorporating ‘Fresh As’ Freeze-Dried Raspberry Powder)

Mum and I love going shopping at Vetro, a specialty food store. Last time we were there I happened across a range of freeze-dried fruits and fruit powders made by New Zealand company, Fresh As. The freeze-dried products are available in a variety of flavours and all looked very tempting so it took a while for me to decide which flavour to buy. Eventually I chose a sachet of freeze-dried raspberry powder and I couldn’t wait to get home to try it out.

On opening the sachet, my nostrils were struck by the intense raspberry aroma and I found the beautiful red shade of the powder mezmerising: already I was impressed with the product. I threw a few ingredients into a blender, along with the raspberry powder and instantly the smoothie mixture turned a lovely pink colour from the raspberry powder’s natural colouring. But the real success was the flavour all thanks to the intensely flavour-packed powder. I wasn’t sure how much of the freeze-dried powder to add to the smoothie, (the packet states that 35g of powder = 320g of real fruit), but after experimenting, found that 2 tablespoons for a large smoothie worked well. I am a convert to this great freeze-dried product, and we already have plans to try the raspberry freeze-dried powder in meringues, so look out for the blog on this. We will be thinking up other ideas to incorporate the other products in the range as well.

The following recipe made enough for one glass, as in the above picture. This recipe is a guide only as these are the ingredients I had to hand, but the combinations of ingredients to make smoothies incorporating the freeze-dried products is endless.

RASPBERRY SMOOTHIE

2 tbspns Fresh-As freeze-dried raspberry powder

½ banana

1 tbspn L.S.A. (ground linseed, sunflower, and almond)

5 tspns Greek yoghurt

Milk, to mix

Mum and I made another smoothie later with the above ingredients and a few frozen raspberries, and a few spoonfuls of Instant Feijoa Ice-cream (see my blog : “Instant Feijoa Ice-cream” for the recipe.) The frozen fruits and the ice-cream cooled the smoothie to a nice temperature (frozen soy milk would be a great addition too). …..Which has just sparked another idea: I would love to try the freeze-dried powder in an instant ice-cream!

For the full range of flavour-packed freeze-dried fruits and fruit powders, see www.fresh-as.com