Hello Masalitos!

September is my birthday month, and for such an event, we celebrated with a deliciously decadent drink - pina colada lassi. Lassi is an Indian drink made with yogurt, sometimes salty, sometimes sweet, in the US, the most well-known lassi is Mango Lassi which is ubiquitous at Indian restaurants. I was craving a pina colada, which is pineapple, coconut, cream, and alcohol (typically rum), so I decided to make a pina colada lassi. I had a similar recipe in our old website, but this one is updated to be a bit less caloric (it’s still indulgent, y’all! this is not a low-calorie drink).

I’ve mentioned before that I’m in Weight Watchers; if you’re familiar with the program, you know that alcoholic drinks at restaurants/bars are very very very high in points - alcohol and sugar are to blame for that. Well… I was willing to use some of my points for a bit of alcohol but not for sugar, so I decided to make my own drink at home.

If you’ve ever had a pina colada, you know that it is sweet and creamy and delicious. I decided to make some changes to the original recipe to reduce the calories/points and still keep the flavor. Instead of cream, I used non-fat plain greek yogurt, and instead of sugar, I used Splenda.

For this recipe, I used pineapple vodka because it’s what I had in my freezer. In the past, I’ve made this with coconut rum and it also tastes great.

I knew that Virat would want a taste, so I decide to make a kid-friendly version as well. For his, I used strawberries (to make it colorful), plain whole milk yogurt, no sugar substitute, and of course, no alcohol. The reason I used regular yogurt instead of Greek for his drink is that Greek yogurt is thicker than regular yogurt and since I wasn’t adding any extra liquid (ie alcohol), I wanted to use a runnier yogurt. Vanilla or strawberry yogurt would work great with this too, but we don’t keep sugary yogurt in the house.

Hope you enjoy this drink. Please leave your comments, we love to hear from you.

Salud!

Recipe

Ingredients

Alcoholic version
-  3/4 cup frozen pineapple chunks
-  3/4 cup non-fat plain greek yogurt
-  2 - 3 tablespoons coconut cream
-  1.5 – 2 oz. pineapple vodka or coconut rum
-  1 tablespoon sweetener (I used Splenda) *optional
-  Coconut flakes to garnish

Non-alcoholic version
- 3/4 cup strawberries
- 3/4 cup plain yogurt
- 2 – 3 tablespoons coconut cream
-  ½ cup ice cubes
-  1 tablespoon sugar *optional
-  Coconut flakes to garnish * optional

Instructions

1. Easy – blend all ingredients together!
2. Garnish with fresh fruit and coconut.

Enjoy!