This healthy smoothie bowl is fun to create, decorate and devour. It will satisfy your sweet tooth and kill cravings until lunch.

I have a lot of things to thank the healthy living blogger community for. Besides being a wealth of information and inspiration I can blame the blogosphere (and Instagram) for my obsession with nut butter, the revelation you can put it on sweet potatoes, the reason I bought (and now love) my food processor, the fact I know about and consume crazy awesome superfoods like hemp and chia seeds (and turmeric, and spirulina, and coconut everything) and of course: Smoothie Bowls.

For a long time I wasn’t that into smoothies. I just prefered to chew my food. But this summer açaí bowls were blowin’ up my instagram feed and they essentially looked like a healthier version of froyo. After getting my paws on one, I basically had a smoothie epiphany, and realized that if I could make them thick enough to eat with a spoon and decorate them with delicious superfood toppings, then well we had a deal. Smoothies were in.

A lot of my former hesitation about smoothies came from my belief that they had a lot of added sugar from juices or sugary yogurts and that they couldn’t keep you full. However, making them with almond milk, coconut milk or unsweetened kefir has proven a delicious solution to the added sugar problem and using a plant based protein (like Vega (my go-t0) , Sun Warrior or Plant Fusion) solves the staying full dilemma.

My secret to making my smoothie bowls thick, creamy and addicting (in the best possible way) is perfecting the banana freeze. I typically buy a dozen bananas at a time to make sure I always have nanners getting perfectly ripe to freeze. To create the perfect frozen banana wait until it’s got it’s “cheetah spots.” This level of ripeness means the banana will be nice and sweet and help balance all that awesome kale and spinach you’ll want to throw in your blendah. I typically add a 1 1/3 medium sized frozen bananas to each smoothie bowl as a base. From there I’ll add 1 1/2 cups of berries, cherries or mango. Then a big ol handful of spinach (sometimes kale) but I find that spinach is milder and blends better. I put a scoop of either chocolate or vanilla vega protein powder, a tsp of vanilla extract and a splash of either almond milk or kefir to help things blend. I usually like to add as little liquid as possible and keep adding if the blender needs a little help. It’s good to remember that you can always add more liquid but you can’t take it away. Once the smoothie is all blended up, I like to pour it into my favorite wooden or glass bowl and that’s when the decoration begins!

Lately my favorite toppings have been unsweetened coconut, unsalted roasted sunflower seeds, hemp seeds and almond butter. The fun part is creating your design. Typically I like to create a half moon shape with the different toppings starting with the coconut, then sunflower seeds, followed by the hemp seeds and finally the inner circle is the almond butter.

Now that Spring is coming I’ll finally feel less crazy for dreating (drink/eating) a smoothie bowl every morning. If you ever snap (and instagram) any pics of your beautiful creations pretty please tag me so I can see them!

My handle is @init4thelongrunblog – warning I post a lot of smoothies 😉

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Your Turn:

• How do you like your smoothies? Drinkable or spoonable?
• Have you ever discovered a food or product you liked through a blog or instagram?

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