Fresh smoothies & Caramel frappes

During the summer those piping hot cups of tea and Bailey's splashed coffee are put to one side in favour of cool and refreshing drinks. In between glasses of Ice Tea (peach FYI) and remembering to drink water, we can't help but enjoy a caramel iced coffee or strawberry and blueberry smoothie. Especially when it's complete with heaps of ice.

For the past month, we've made it routine to make a fresh smoothie for breakfast mostly consisting of strawberries and blueberries (that's totally fine..it's still part of our five a day right..?!). Here's what we use to make our smoothies - Just a heads up, we don't measure anything out as we go by our blender to get the right amount (it's taken a fair few days to know what we needed more and less of!).Onken Yoghurt (we love the mango, passion fruit and papaya flavour!)Mango Juice (you can use Orange too)6 StrawberriesA Handful of Blueberries1 BananaIce (we put some in the blender and some straight into the glass)Pop it all into a blender (we simply use a handheld one) and whizz away for a few seconds until you're happy with the texture. Occasionally we'll add in a scoop of vanilla ice cream if we're feeling wild. Trust me, it makes the smoothie so much more scrumptious! Pour into your glass, and serve with a sweet strawberry.

We love Starbucks as much as the next person and their nan but if we drank there everyday we'd probably be living in a tent somewhere (I understand that I'm exaggerating slightly) so we set about making our own on weekends at home and each time they're getting better and better. Plus it's the perfect excuse to have caramel sauce in the morning...! Here's what we use to make our caramel frappe's - again, we don't tend to measure it out (I know, we're pretty slack at this recipe stuff!).A shot of Espresso coffeeCaramel sauce (or syrup if you're fancy!)MilkIce (again, some for the blender and some for the glass)Ice cream (this is optional!)Squirty creamSimply add a small portion of hot water to some coffee granules, stir and pop into the blender with some ice cream and ice and plenty of milk. Whizz it all together for a few seconds (you can add in some sauce if you wish at this point although we prefer to decorate it around the glass) and then pour into your glass and serve with some squirty cream (and more sauce for that extra flavour!) and a straw. Happy drinking!