The last carrot cake I made was for my daughter’s first birthday. Her favorite food at the time was glazed carrots, so my husband and I took the day off work and lovingly made her a homemade carrot cake, complete with cream cheese frosting and decorations we piped on ourself.

She took one small lick and didn’t care about that cake at all. It wasn’t one of those pictures of a one-year-old just covered in cake. It was a perfectly clean toddler turning her nose up at a cake we had worked so hard on! Who knows, maybe she would have liked lemon curd cake better?

She’s 4 now, and I told her this story while serving her one of these Carrot Cake Smoothies last week and she said “Yeah mom, I don’t like cake!”

But she DID like this carrot smoothie. Like my lemon smoothie and blueberry lemon smoothie, I pack a lot of good-for-you ingredients into a creamy, portable and utterly sippable breakfast or snack.

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As a food photographer and recipe developer, and before that, somebody who just REALLY loved food and cooking, I’d be lying if I said it was easy to maintain a healthy diet while being surrounded by food for much of the day.

While I’ve developed a talent for being able to ignore crave-able food photos (they don’t even make my stomach rumble anymore), it’s much harder to ignore a big real-life plate of brownies or blueberry buttermilk muffins you just finished photographing in the middle of the afternoon. You know you just had lunch and that a healthy dinner is on the horizon…but…brownies.

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I start most mornings with a carrot cake smoothie made in my beloved Vitamix and a cup of coffee made in my beloved French press. The problem with this arrangement is the daily decision of which to make first.

Some mornings, it’s clear: I need coffee or the day can go no further.

Other days, I feel like having a nice big serving of fruits and/or veggies in a  lemon smoothie or blueberry lemon smoothie, and getting that out of the way for the day.

But as I’m drinking the smoothie, I’m usually like “but…..coffee….”

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