This Orange Julius is a sweet and creamy drink perfect for the summer time. It’s an easy blender drink recipe with simple ingredients. You will find it so refreshing!

 

Blender drinks have always been a go-to whenever summer hits and our CopyCat Orange Julius recipe is one of our favorites. While we make a few departures from the original recipe, we’ve found ways to keep it easy to make while staying rich, sweet, creamy, and tasty! We’ve even got a few substitutions and variations that’ll help everyone looking for a healthy Orange Julius recipe or even a dairy-free one.

Why you’ll love our Orange Julius recipe

• We’ve kept the ingredients list short and the recipe simple to make making a delicious Orange drink quick and easy!
• This dessert drink uses that classic combo of orange and vanilla flavors- sort of like a creamsicle smoothie.
• The only ingredient here you might not have on hand is the orange juice concentrate. Milk, sugar, and vanilla? All staple ingredients you probably have in your fridge and pantry!
• This tasty orange treat is packed with Vitamin C, so it’s healthy and refeshing.

Orange Julius Ingredients

Chances are that you probably already have most of these ingredients sitting around! This recipe for Orange Julius with orange juice concentrate requires so few ingredients. Pick up some orange juice concentrate from the store, grab milk from the fridge, an ice cube tray and a couple other pantry staples and you’re set. With that in mind, here’s all the ingredients you need:

• Orange Juice Concentrate – Considering everything’s going into a blender, you can get away with using a pulp or pulp-free concentrate here. Pulp-free will likely yield a smoother Orange Julius. Remember to keep your concentrate frozen before blending!
• Milk – You could also try subbing in some half-and-half for some or all of the milk- you might get a creamier end product! Try it out and let us know how it ended up for you.
• Water
• Sugar – Keep things simple with plain white table sugar here.
• Vanilla Extract – A touch of added vanilla helps give us more of that creamsicle flavor.
• Crushed Ice or Ice Cubes

You might also want to cut some orange slices for garnishing your drink.

How to make Orange Julius

The best part of our recipe is just how simple it is: blender drinks are always so easy to make! To make your own, here’s all you have to do:

1. Cut and prep orange slice garnishes if using before assembling and measuring ingredients. Try to work quick to keep everything cold.
2. Add all ingredients to blender and blend to desired consistency.
3. Pour your blended Homemade Orange Julius into cups. Optionally garnish with orange slices, add straws, and serve.

Substitutions

If you need to change things up because you’re on a diet or have any sort of issues with dairy, there’s plenty of places you can change this recipe up to make it a bit more diet-friendly:

• Milk – There’s a whole world of milk substitutes and non-dairy milk out there. If you’re just trying to cut down on the calories, fats or sugars then simply sub in skim milk or fat-free milk. For non-dairy options, coconut milk will give you the creamiest dairy free Orange Julius but most nut milks like cashew or almond milk will work too.
• Sweetener – White sugar is the simplest sweetener you can pick, but you could also sub this out. Use honey if you want to use a natural sweetener or substitute an appropriate amount of a low calorie or no calorie sweetener like stevia.
• Fresh Orange Juice– feel free to make your own freshly squeezed orange juice. The flavor may not be spot on but will make your beverage a bit more fresh tasting.

Variations

Outside of the changes we listed above, there’s also a few different spins you can take on the classic Orange Julius recipe.

• Orange Julius Smoothie – With all the ice and milk, you’ve already got a great start to a delicious dessert smoothie recipe! Try adding in some classic smoothie ingredients like bananas or some other frozen berries.
• Egg – While we left it out of our recipe, some other recipes you’ll find will include either some whipped egg whites, egg white powder or even a whole egg! We had some concerns about adding raw egg into our recipe and think it turned out just fine without it- you can try adding egg but be safe!

Storage / Freezing

It’s best to only make up as much Orange Julius as you plan on drinking when you go blend some up. However, you can store leftovers in the fridge. When you’re in the mood, throw it back into the blender with some fresh crushed ice and blend to your desired consistency. It might not taste as good as the first time but it beats letting it go to waste!

FAQ

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