I’ve spotted a couple of appliances for making vegan beverages and smoothies easier: the Milkmade Non-Dairy Milk Maker and the BlendJet 2.

The milk maker, made by ChefWave, turns nuts, oats, rice, coconut or soybeans into a hot or cold 10- or 20-ounce beverage in about 15 minutes. Then it cleans itself!

It looks like a coffee maker with a water tank at the back. You place a handful of the hard ingredients into the hopper on top, and hot water is dispensed into the hopper for a soaking period. The high-speed grinding step is next, pulverizing the ingredients into a super-fine powder.

Once ground, the beverage is released into a glass pitcher. Another receptacle behind the pitcher collects the rinse water.

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There are six preset milk-making programs on the digital panel. The result is a steaming hot sip, but if you want to use it for chilled drinks and smoothies, you’ll need to plan on refrigerating the finished drink.

While a high-powered blender like a Vitamix makes nondairy milks and works wonders grinding nuts, you still need to soak the nuts before blending them — and once it’s blended, the mixture has to be drained in a nut bag. The Milkmade handles both those steps automatically.

The milk replacements can also be used to make cookies, ice cream or savory dishes.

The Milkmade can be purchased at mychefwave.com and Walmart for $199.

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Armed with your freshly made nondairy beverage, you’ll be set to give the BlendJet 2 a test drive for making smoothies. This adorable- looking, personal-size blender is cordless, charged from a waterproof USB-C port, and gets more than 15 blends per charge. You can mix your drinks anywhere — from your campsite to the hot tub — and drink it straight from the blender jar.

With two presses on the start button, you can crush veggies and fruits for smoothie bar-quality drinks. You can also whip up cocktails, desserts, guacamole, pesto, salsa, hummus and other sauces, toppings and dips.

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If you don’t have time to create your own concoction, ready-to-blend smoothie mixes are sold at the BlendJet website. These offer protein-rich breakfasts, lunches or snacks that you can blend at your desk if needed.

BlendJet 2 is water-resistant and comes in 16 bright colors. It costs $49.95 at blendjet.com. Other accessories are available at the site, as well as a variety of recipes.

Contact the writer: 636-0271.