Blending Right In

The Breville Blend Active

As soon as I saw Claudia of The Claudia Couture talk about this blender I knew it would be something I would not only love but use a lot. 

I ordered mine from Amazon UK for £24.97 (what a totally random amount - come on it is £25 and we, the public, are not dumb enough to be fooled by showing the lower numbers). If you see it elsewhere on the high street at a higher price I would suggest asking if they have a price matching policy and then ask them to check the lower online price. My husband just saved £50 on a golfing item in a store that did price matching. Always worth a try.

So what is so different about this particular blender? Well, first, it is small and neat and secondly, it is super easy to clean. 

A new toy but one that will be much loved and used

The easy cleaning is really what sold it to me. I love smoothies but not the amount of washing up that goes with them. With this blender you simply rinse the blade with a little washing up liquid and dry and do the same with the container once you have enjoyed the smoothie. You can put the bottles in the dishwasher but I think over time that might dull the look of the plastic. You can also part fill a bottle with warm soapy water and 'blend' it to clean the blade and bottle.

This is what you get: the machine, the blade and two 600 ml sports bottles

First fill up your sports bottle with ingredients (there is a section in the manual with recipes to get you started).

Screw the blade on top.

Invert and place on machine. Screw in and press the blend button. Hey presto you have a smoothie. Unscrew and invert again and put on sports top.

The sports bottle with blade attachment on top

The manual gives you details of where you can get extra bottles. You can make each smoothie and pour into a glass if you were serving it up at home for more than two people (or like me just drink straight from the bottle when I'm home alone!).

The bottle inverted and screwed into the machine
ready to blend.

The bottles are made of a safe plastic but I would still be wary of leaving a drink in a hot car without putting it in a freezer bag first.

Here is a protein shake recipe which is in the manual if you want to try it at home to see how much you can expect to make with each 600ml bottle. It is very tasty and perfect for pre-run nutrition.

300ml milk (skimmed or otherwise)

2 tbspns unsweetened peanut butter

2 tbspns oats (your breakfast porridge is fine)

handful of frozen berries (I used raspberries)

one small banana broken into pieces

Blend and enjoy.

The Breville Blend Active manual and
my 'Secret Santa' Runners book of smoothies

Footnote: At Christmas my Secret Santa present at The Commando Runners' (a running group I belong to) get together was "The Smoothies For Runners Book" and now that is really going to get a work out!