Skip to content
whisksweetly
Home Recipes About Contact

By course

By method

Cinnamon Roll Protein Shake

Thirty grams of protein that tastes like the middle of a cinnamon bun. Frozen banana does the work, not ice.

Prep
5 min
Makes
Makes 1 large shake
Jump to the recipe
Two tall glasses of a creamy blended drink
Photo: Peter Fazekas / Pexels

Protein shakes are usually thin, and the fix most people reach for is ice, which makes them cold and thin instead.

Frozen banana is the answer. Bananas are full of pectin, and blending frozen banana produces a texture close to soft-serve — thick enough to eat with a spoon if you use two. It also brings enough sweetness that the shake needs almost no added sugar, and it hides the chalky note that most vanilla protein powders carry.

Freeze the banana peeled and in chunks. Whole frozen bananas are impossible to peel and will break a blender blade — this is a mistake people make exactly once.

Cinnamon and vanilla do the rest, but the ingredient that actually makes it read as *cinnamon roll* rather than *cinnamon* is a spoonful of cream cheese. That slight sourness is the frosting note, and without it the shake tastes like spiced milk.

For breakfast that needs chewing, blueberry oatmeal bars cover the same ground.

A pinch of salt is not optional in any sweet drink. It suppresses bitterness from the protein powder and makes everything else taste more like itself.

Cinnamon sticks and ground cinnamon
Photo: stevepb / Pixabay

A vanilla protein shake, printed

Thirty grams of protein that tastes like the middle of a cinnamon bun. Frozen banana does the work, not ice.

What goes in the blender

  • 1 large banana, peeled, sliced and frozen
  • 1 cup (240 ml) milk or oat milk
  • 1 scoop (30 g) vanilla protein powder
  • 1 tbsp cream cheese
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon, plus more to serve
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 tbsp maple syrup, optional
  • Pinch of fine salt

Blending it thick

  1. 1 Put the milk in the blender first, then everything else on top. Liquid at the bottom lets the blades catch instead of spinning under a frozen brick.
  2. 2 Blend 45–60 seconds until completely smooth. Scrape down once.
  3. 3 Taste. Add the maple syrup only if the banana was not ripe enough to carry it.
  4. 4 Pour and dust generously with cinnamon.

On ripeness and thickness

  • Freeze bananas when they are heavily spotted. Underripe bananas are starchy and taste green in a shake.
  • For a thicker shake use two frozen bananas and half the milk.