Five-Minute Fruit Froyo

I've always been a little jealous about that "frozen banana ice cream" that you just make out of bananas, because we can't eat bananas. So when I found a frozen yogurt recipe that uses just fruit and a little greek yogurt, I was excited to try it. I'm in love with it, so I'm sharing it today! The only thing better than froyo on a hot summer day, is healthy froyo that you can make yourself with just a few ingredients in five minutes (and you don't need an ice cream maker). I've seen lots of different versions of this on Pinterest. You can really use any frozen fruit, but they may produce different textures and require different amounts of sweetening. We made strawberry froyo first so here's the basic recipe. 

Whenever strawberries are on sale we buy a few extra boxes, wash, chop, and freeze them. This is much cheaper than buying frozen fruit and this way we are ready for smoothies or froyo any time! You can fit about two cups of chopped frozen strawberries in a sandwich bag, so one of those is all you need for this recipe.

Strawberry Blender Froyo

2 cups frozen strawberries

1/4 cup plain or vanilla greek yogurt

1/2 tbsp. lemon juice

2 tbsp. agave or spenda

optional: chopped fresh basil or mint

In a food processor, combine frozen fruit, lemon juice, yogurt and sweetener. Blend until smooth. 

You may need to stop and stir it a couple times or try adding a little water if it has trouble blending, but in about five minutes you should have smooth, creamy froyo. Plan to eat it right away if you want that soft serve texture.

I let the kids add some sprinkles

 for a more complex taste, try sprinkling on some chopped fresh basil or mint. It's yummy. : )

You can store it in the freezer for later, but know that it freezes pretty hard. You will need to let it sit out for 15 minutes or so to be able to scoop it, and the texture will be a little icier. Below, the dark pink is strawberry and the light pink is watermelon. The watermelon was a much icier, less creamy texture, and because of the higher water content--it freezes harder. It was also harder to blend, I think again, because it was frozen harder than the other fruit. But, I used Splenda in the watermelon batch and it was sweeter and had a great flavor. Both were delish, and the kiddos love them. 

We plan to try this with frozen peaches, pineapple and mango too. I think mango mint or peach with lavender would be delicious! It's fun to be able to pull garden herbs into every meal, even dessert. 

Hope you are staying cool and enjoying summer!