The original was delicious, so I tried to make it better (and cheaper) at home.
Hi, I’m Shelby, and I’m someone who REALLY likes smoothies — I pretty much make one every single morning for breakfast. I like them so much, in fact, that I previously tried and wrote about Marianna Hewitt’s $17 Coconut Cloud Smoothie that went super viral on TikTok in April.
Shelby Heinrich/
The smoothie was exclusively available at Erewhon, a VERY bougie grocery store chain in Los Angeles. FWIW, I thought it was good, but wasn’t sure if I’d get it again.
Well, now there’s a new smoothie in our midst. In June, Hailey Bieber announced her own drink collab with Erewhon: The Strawberry Skin Smoothie, which is very pink and also costs $17.
@haileybieber / Via tiktok.com, @haileybieber / Via tiktok.com
Here’s what’s in it:
—Strawberries
—Avocado
—Dates
—Maple syrup
—MALK almond milk
—ZUMA Valley coconut cream
—Hyaluronic acid (I didn’t realize that was edible???)
—Vanilla stevia
—Vital Proteins vanilla collagen
—Erewhon sea moss (I also don’t fully understand what this is)
Since I’m never one to turn down a blended fruit drink — and I wanted to see how it compared to the cloud smoothie — I hightailed it to my nearest Erewhon prepared to drop some cash. Lo and behold, there she was at the tonic bar:
There were about five more people ahead of me who’d ordered the smoothie, so I was waiting for a while. After what felt like an eternity, I finally got my hands on it. I definitely was getting some “strawberry swirl” vibes at first glance.
But presentation means nothing if it doesn’t taste good, so I eagerly took my first sip.
Shelby Heinrich/
Is there a way to take a picture of yourself sucking on a straw that doesn’t look super awkward and weird? Asking for a friend!!!
The “strawberry swirl” appearance wasn’t lying. This smoothie was VERY sweet, much sweeter than I anticipated. The flavor reminded me of strawberry shortcake, specifically those strawberry shortcake ice cream bars I used to get at gas stations when I was a kid. I think I would’ve liked some tartness in there to cut the sweetness of the strawberries (some raspberries would make it GO OFF), but I still enjoyed it. It was also SO SMOOTH and creamy. IDK if the hyaluronic acid and collagen did much for my skin, but I like to think I had a lil’ glow while drinking it.
Shelby Heinrich/
Overall, I liked Hailey’s skin smoothie much more than Marianna’s cloud smoothie.
Buying the smoothie is a good option if you live in LA (and have an extra $20 to spare), but I wanted to see if it was possible to recreate it at home, like tons of people have been doing online. I decided to follow a recipe from Vital Proteins and @bevsbybeverly, but all the other copycat recipes I saw out there were basically identical, so any one you choose should be fine.
@vitalproteins / Via tiktok.com
Here’s what the at-home smoothie calls for:
—1 cup frozen strawberries
—1/2 cup almond milk
—1/4 avocado
—2 pitted dates
—2 scoops Vital Proteins vanilla collagen creamer
—1 tablespoon maple syrup
—Coconut cream
—Fresh strawberries for glaze/purée
Here’s everything I bought to recreate the smoothie. In total, my grocery bill was $37.49. That’s a lot more than $17, but I estimated that this was probably enough to make about four to five smoothies, which would then shake out to around $8 a smoothie.
Shelby Heinrich/
I bought most of the ingredients at my local Whole Foods, so you could probably get them for even cheaper if you shopped elsewhere. You could also cut the cost even more by buying generic versions of some of the brand-name products, like MALK almond milk. I only grabbed that because it was there, and I wanted to try and get my smoothie as close to the original as possible.
Also, I skipped out on the hyaluronic acid and sea moss. That’s not something many people have easy access to, and I doubted it would have much effect on the taste anyway.
The first step in my skin-smoothie-at-home journey was cutting up and blending some fresh strawberries for the purée. Easy peasy!
After setting the purée aside, I combined all the other ingredients (minus the coconut cream) in a blender and blended for about a minute.
Here’s what it looked like. Not quite as pink as Hailey’s, but I’ll take what I can get!
Next up was prepping a vessel for the smoothie. I grabbed the prettiest glass I could find (presentation is still important!) and did my best to spread some purée around the sides of the glass.
Same for the coconut cream.
And finally, it was time to pour in the base of the smoothie.
Here’s the final product:
IDK, not a perfect dupe, but not too shabby either!!!
At long last, time for the taste test. Please enjoy another awkward pic of me drinking through a straw!
Y’all, the at-home version tasted PRETTY DARN SIMILAR. I was shocked. Same sweetness, same strawberry shortcake flavor, same hints of coconut from the coconut cream. The only minor difference was that since I blended it at home, the texture wasn’t as smooth and creamy as when I got it at Erewhon, but that was pretty much it. Much like when I bought it, I wolfed this down in less than five minutes.
Hailey Bieber’s Strawberry Skin Smoothie will be available at Erewhon stores in Los Angeles until July 15, but if you happen to miss it or don’t live in LA, I highly recommend making it at home! You can get multiple smoothies out of it (currently drinking my second one as I write this post), and it really does taste 99% like the original.
Have you tried this smoothie? Would you try it? Tell us in the comments!
