Reading Time: 3 minutes
During our trip to Bali, I fell in love with smoothie bowls. I know they’ve been a big trend for quite a while but for the most part when it comes to eating fruit, I generally prefer to keep it simple with a mono-meal or basic fruit platter.
Smoothie bowls are simply an extra thick smoothie that is served in a bowl with fresh fruits and other fun toppings. They are a great way to incorporate different superfoods into your diet, either blended into the smoothie base or sprinkled on top.
In this smoothie bowl, I used a combination of frozen raspberries with fresh bananas for the base to which I added sprouted almond butter, raw honey, lucuma, maca, and vanilla. The almond butter makes it nice and creamy and the superfoods add a little more thickness and depth of flavor. These ingredients also help keep you feeling full for longer, which is beneficial if you have a busy day ahead of you. Because smoothie bowls can be so filling I usually enjoy them for lunch and this will keep me going until dinner without any need for an afternoon snack.
I topped this smoothie bowl with extra raspberries, shredded coconut, and a drizzle of raw honey, but here is where you can get creative if you like. Other good additions would be sliced banana, goji berries, chia seeds, hemp seeds, bee pollen, cacao nibs or raw buckwheat granola. I prefer to use medicine flower vanilla extract but you could easily substitute with ground vanilla bean or alcohol-free vanilla extract.
Here is another bowl I made with the same base but topped with fresh papaya, dried strawberries, mulberries, and coconut.
Smoothie bowls can be a fun addition to your diet if you are getting a bit bored with simple fruit meals though I do still recommend avoiding complicated combinations. Don’t go overboard and add too much fat or try to put eight or nine different superfoods into your bowl. Keep it to no more than 1 or 2 tablespoons of healthy fats and two or three extra ingredients. This will make sure your smoothie bowl is easy to digest so you don’t feel weighed down and are able to absorb the optimum amount of nutrients from your meal.
Everyone seems to love smoothie bowls so they could be a great way to introduce your friends and family to raw food. They would also be a fantastic alternative to packaged breakfast cereals for kids and would give them a nutritional advantage and the best quality fuel for supporting their schoolwork and other activities.
This smoothie bowl is a good source of vitamin B6, folate and vitamin C, and offers 40 percent of the daily magnesium requirement for adults. It also provides a whopping 33 grams of dietary fiber – primarily coming from the raspberries – which is over and above the recommended daily intake.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups raspberries
- 1 banana
- 1 tablespoon sprouted almond butter
- 1 tablespoon raw honey
- 2 teaspoons lucuma optional
- 1 teaspoon maca optional
- 3 drops medicine flower vanilla extract or 1 teaspoon vanilla bean powder or 1 teaspoon alcohol-free vanilla extra
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 tablespoon coconut
Instructions
- Combine 1 cup raspberries, banana, almond butter, raw honey, lucuma, maca, vanilla and water in a blender and blend until smooth and creamy.
- If the smoothie is too thick, add more water as necessary.
- Pour the mixture into a bowl.
- Top with additional 1 cup raspberries, coconut and a drizzle of honey.
Notes
Nutrition
Have you ever tried a smoothie bowl? What are your favorite smoothie bowl combinations?
