Choosing your fruit and flavor combinations is very important and can be surprisingly difficult if you don’t have some guidelines.  Because let’s face it, some fruits play nice with others, and others do not.  Bananas are generally the nice neighbor and go with just about everything.

To help avoid confusion, I always group smoothie fruits into three categories: berries, tropicals, and exotics.  

FRUIT:
Berries: The berries which include everything from strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries & cherries generally go really well with orange and apple juice bases.  When mixed with banana, they also go really well with milk and sorbet bases.

Tropicals: The tropicals like mangoes, bananas, pineapple & peaches go really well with pineapple juices and sorbets.  They are usually a bit tangier than berry based smoothies.  Bananas, as I mentioned before are great for giving all fruit and  juice smoothies a smooth texture.

Exotics: The exotics which include Açaí, Goji Berries, and Mangosteen are usually great with fruit juices and sorbets and mix well with bananas and other berries
And further, when choosing between frozen or fresh fruit, always remember that frozen fruit will allow you to thicken smoothies without ice while fresh fruit inevitably makes smoothies thinner. If you do use fresh fruit, lower the juice by 1-2 oz and add approx 2-4 oz ice to taste.