For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a chocolate sweet tooth. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved the taste of chocolate. Nowadays, as an adult, I’ve learned all sorts of tips and tricks that let me satisfy my chocolate sweet tooth in totally healthy ways. Great recipes like this one for making a yummy 4-ingredient chocolate smoothie let me indulge in the taste of chocolate without having to feel guilty about it. You’re especially going to love this recipe if you’re a fan of one of my favorite flavor combinations — peanut butter and chocolate. Made with only four simple ingredients, this smoothie is deceptively easy to make, but still manages to offer an amazing taste that’s out of this world good.

Four Fantastic Ingredients

Considering there are only four ingredients required to make this recipe (plus a bit of ice), we’ll be taking a few minutes to discuss why each of the four have been chosen. All four ingredients provide their own rather unique benefits to this smoothie recipe. Beginning with using one cup of unsweetened chocolate almond milk for your liquid base, you’ll be getting this smoothie off to a great start. Raw almonds are one of my favorite snacks, and that love definitely extends to almond milk as well. Adding healthy nuts like almonds to your diet is a great way to lower your risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. (1) Almond milk provides the same benefits, and using an unsweetened chocolate flavor goes perfectly with the raw cacao powder.

Adding two tablespoons of raw cacao powder gives your smoothie even more yummy chocolate flavoring. More importantly, cacao is an incredibly nutritious way to enjoy the taste of chocolate. It’s full of antioxidant compounds that provide numerous great health benefits, such as potentially preventing or treating conditions like allergies, cancer, diabetes, and insulin resistance. (2) The combination of cacao and chocolate flavored almond milk adds a delicious one-two punch of taste for your smoothie.

Speaking of flavor combinations, you’ll also be mixing in one tablespoon of natural peanut butter with this recipe. Chocolate and peanut butter is an all-time classic combo, and it works spectacularly well when it comes to making unbelievably tasty smoothies. Not only that, but studies have found that nut butters can be equally as healthy as raw nut sources. In fact, nut and peanut butter consumption has been linked with a decreased risk of developing certain types of cancers, like stomach and colon cancer. (3)

Last but not least, the final ingredient needed to make this recipe is some frozen sliced banana pieces. Mixing in bananas is a great way to add more fiber, potassium, and B-complex vitamins into your smoothie. They’re also a good carb option for individuals with type 2 diabetes to consume, as due to their high fiber content, they don’t cause drastic blood sugar spikes. As a matter of fact, daily banana consumption was shown to have some rather beneficial results for diabetic patients according to one study. (4) Then there’s also the added bonus that bananas are one of those ingredients that happens to combine phenomenally well with chocolate and peanut butter.