Favorite Banana Split Smoothies

The mixer mourning continues. I've been hand-mixing everything, which is building arm muscles I didn't know I had and also giving me a profound appreciation for the women who cooked before electric mixers existed. Mom's mother — Grandma Carol — made biscuits and cakes and bread without a stand mixer for her entire life. With her HANDS. Every recipe. Every batch. For sixty years. We are soft. The modern kitchen has made us soft. Grandma Carol would have looked at my KitchenAid grief and said, 'Child, I mixed bread dough with a wooden spoon for thirty years and never once complained.' (I don't actually know if she would have said this. She died when I was six. But I imagine she would have said this, because she was a West Virginia woman who raised five children during the Depression, and Depression women do not grieve appliances.) The blog post about the mixer broke the internet. 'My KitchenAid Died and I'm in Mourning: A Military Wife's Most Devastating Moving Loss.' Twenty thousand views. Military wives commenting with their own moving losses: 'The movers broke my grandmother's china.' 'They lost an entire box of Christmas ornaments.' 'My wedding album was water-damaged.' 'They dented my Le Creuset and I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THEM.' Moving losses. The specific grief of having your possessions handled by strangers who don't know what the things mean. To the movers, it's a mixer. To me, it's the wedding gift that made my first cookies in Jacksonville and my first birthday cake for Caleb and every batch of bread I've ever baked. But. But. The cast iron survived. The recipe binder survived. The wooden spoons survived. The things that matter most — the things that can't be replaced — survived. And I'm still cooking. Without the mixer. With a wooden spoon and arm muscles and the stubbornness of a woman who refuses to let the movers win. Made Mom's banana bread tonight. By hand. No mixer. The batter was lumpy (hand mixing doesn't cream butter and sugar the way a mixer does) but the bread was good. Dense. Rich. A little rougher than the mixer version. Grandma Carol's banana bread. Before mixers. Before convenience. Before softness. The movers broke the mixer. They can't break the recipe. Eighteen months until the claim resolves. I'll survive.

The banana bread turned out denser than usual — hand-mixed, a little rough, exactly right for the week I’d had — and I had two more spotted bananas sitting on the counter begging for a purpose. I wasn’t ready to haul out the wooden spoon again, so I let the blender do the one job the movers couldn’t ruin. These Favorite Banana Split Smoothies are everything the banana bread wasn’t: cold, fast, a little indulgent, and deeply uncomplicated. Grandma Carol would probably call it dessert for breakfast and not apologize for a second, and neither will I.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 5 min | Servings: 2

Ingredients

2 ripe bananas, peeled and sliced
1 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup crushed pineapple, drained
1 cup vanilla yogurt
1/2 cup milk (whole or 2%)
1/2 cup ice cubes
1 tablespoon honey (optional)
Whipped cream and maraschino cherries for topping (optional)

Instructions

Prep the bananas. Slice the ripe bananas and place them in the blender. The riper the banana, the sweeter and creamier your smoothie will be.
Add remaining ingredients. Add the frozen strawberries, crushed pineapple, vanilla yogurt, milk, ice cubes, and honey if using.
Blend until smooth. Blend on high for 45–60 seconds until the mixture is completely smooth and creamy. If it’s too thick, add a splash more milk and blend briefly.
Taste and adjust. Taste the smoothie and add honey for extra sweetness or a few more ice cubes if you prefer it colder and thicker.
Serve immediately. Pour into two tall glasses. Top with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry if you’re going full banana split. No stand mixer required.

Nutrition (per serving)

Favorite Banana Split Smoothies — A Little Sweetness After the Storm