Sunny Smoothie Bowl

Like many families, we love our smoothies and this Sunny Smoothie Bowl is a delight!  For years, we drank them out of individual smoothie cups with big straws. Then my daughter started making extra thick smoothies that you could eat with a spoon like ice cream. She’d put them in bowls and top them with seeds, nuts, whole fruit and drizzles of nut butters or chocolate syrup.  I was so impressed by how beautiful and enticing they were.  

Then the whole family was drawn in by how delicious and filling they are.  We love how they can be customized to our whims on any given day too.  This Sunny Smoothie Bowl has a tropical style base of mango, banana and pineapple. Topped with kiwi, blueberries, shredded coconut and granola, there is added texture and a little crunch.  

Simple Process

Frozen mango, banana and pineapple juice go into the blender or food processor at the same time.  Then you blend or process it.  That’s all there is to it!  Once it reaches a thick “soft-serve” consistency, scrape it into a cereal bowl.  Top with the diced kiwi, fresh blueberries, coconut and granola.  Then dig in & enjoy!  

Fresh, Frozen, Liquid

For really thick and cold smoothie bowls, the majority of the fruit used for the base needs to be frozen.  If possible, I like to use all frozen fruit with just a little juice, but if you have some fresh fruit to use, that’s okay too!  Just try to keep to about 2.5 cups of frozen to ½ cup fresh with ½ cup juice.  The juice is purely needed to keep the blender blades moving (more on that below).  However, the juice can also add a bit of flavor, sweetness or tartness depending on what you use.   

Blender Method

A high speed blender or smoothie maker like a Vitamix or Ninja is really helpful when making these.  I would hate to hear that you burned out a motor on a standard blender that isn’t made to handle hard frozen fruit.  So by all means, if your blender is overheating while trying to make this Sunny Smoothie Bowl, try the food processor or go with a more liquid version and pour in more juice so that there is less strain on the blades and motor. 

That being said, using a blender for a smoothie bowl will require either using a damper to keep the mixture moving into the blades or stopping and scraping down the sides multiple times.  The more juice you add, the easier it will blend.  However, this will also create a thinner smoothie base.  My daughter prefers making smoothie bowls in a blender and they always turn out smooth and thick without any trouble at all.

Food Processor Method

A food processor will also turn out beautifully thick and smooth fruit bases.  There isn’t any right or wrong way though!  I find that the food processor rarely requires stopping to scrape the sides or additional juice to be added.  It tends to be strong enough to blend the mixture to a smooth consistency in about 90 seconds.  

However, you do need to pay attention to the size of the food processor bowl.  If you don’t have enough material in there, it just doesn’t seem to have enough to “grab” and pulverize.  As a result, the blades may spin and all of the fruit just sticks to the side.  For my 12 cup capacity processor, the 3.5 cups mixture of fruit and juice is the bare minimum I can get away with, otherwise it would be better to use a single serving smoothie container. 

How Much Smoothie?

This Sunny Smoothie Bowl recipe makes 1 very large serving or two moderately sized servings.  The final smoothie base is about 3 cups.  Given the “soft serve” texture, leftovers can be stored for an hour or two in the fridge or freezer with modest impact.  Any longer than that and you will find a very different bowl than you started with!  Therefore, if this recipe is too large of a serving for you, it can be cut in half, but I would suggest using a single serve smoothie cup to blend it.  The blender or food processor usually needs more material to work well.

Options

The options are limitless!  Stick to the amounts in this recipe, just change up the types of fruit and toppings however you’d like.  If you’d like a protein packed version, check out my Berry Protein Smoothie Bowl.