Smoothies have grown enormously in popularity within recent years. They are, after all, a great way of contributing towards your daily five portions of fruit or vegetables. They are commercially available of course, but learning how to make fruit smoothies is surprisingly easy.

The first thing you need is a liquid base. There are number of options for this. Probably the most commonly used is a fruit juice. Whether you use your own freshly prepared juice or juice from a carton is entirely up to you, although if you use your own juice then you can be sure that it contains more of the fruit than ready prepared juice.

An alternative is to use dairy products. Milk is the most popular, although if you want to reduce calories you should use semi-skimmed or skimmed milk. Yogurt is another option, although bear in mind this will give a rather different consistency than a true liquid base. Again, you should be aware of the calorie content and this can be kept to a minimum by using low-fat yogurt. If you are wanting to avoid dairy products but want the same type of effect, then you could try using soy milk or other dairy alternative. These work well and give a very similar result to real milk.

The other option is to use water. However, you should make sure that you other additions to the smoothie have plenty of flavor otherwise you could end up with something that is rather bland and tasteless. Once you have decided on your liquid base then you need to add your fruit. Soft fruit works best - strawberries, bananas, raspberries and pineapple are examples of fruit that work well, but there are many more. Generally you should use fresh fruit, but can also use frozen fruit - there is no need to defrost it, just add it as it is.