Avocado Key Lime Pie Smoothie Bowl

Written by our friends Liz Weiss, MS, RD and Janice Newell-Bissex, MS, RD, The Meal Makeover Moms

Are you still eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and dessert from plates? If you are, you’re missing out on one of the coolest culinary trends to hit kitchen tables this decade: Bowls! Everyone from food bloggers, cookbook authors and home cooks to restaurant chefs and food trucks is cooking up colorful and nutrient-rich meals and serving them in bowls versus on plates. Are you ready to jump on the bowl bandwagon?

From seasonally-inspired protein bowls and rice bowls, to burrito bowls and breakfast bowls, we love this trend for its playfulness, deliciousness, and wholesomeness. And with so many ingredient choices, ethnic inspirations and meal occasions, no two bowls are alike. The beauty of these one-bowl wonders is their colorful combination of nourishing ingredients like vegetables, whole grains, fresh and frozen fruit, avocados, and lean protein foods including grilled chicken and shrimp, hard-cooked eggs, lentils, beans, nuts, yogurt, cheese and tofu.

Our obsession with smoothie bowls

If you love bowl meals as much as we do, then breakfast is the perfect time of day to satisfy your craving. Smoothie bowls are thicker than traditional smoothies, so they’re consumed with a spoon. No straw required. And they’re nourishing. When making smoothie bowls, we turn to a rainbow of ingredients — Greek yogurt, frozen and fresh fruit, California Avocados, nut butters, low-fat milk, 100 percent fruit juice and chia seeds.

Choose just the right combo of ingredients and what you get are smoothie bowls brimming with fiber, protein, calcium, antioxidants and important vitamins like A and C. Their true beauty shines through when you add fun toppers such as nuts, seeds, fresh and dried fruit, whole grain cereal and coconut chips.

Avocados in our smoothie bowl?

Yes please! If you think avocados are ideal for guacamole, tacos, salads and sauces you’re 100 percent correct. But guess what? They’re perfect for smoothie bowls too. Their creamy texture lends irresistible thickness, and their stellar nutrient profile adds great nutrition. California Avocados are in season now — spring through early fall.

Try our Avocado Key Lime Pie Smoothie Bowl and you’ll see what we mean.

The 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend a nutrient-dense, healthy eating pattern that includes plenty of plant foods, and this Avocado Key Lime Pie Smoothie Bowl recipe meets those goals to the tee. The guidelines also recommend a shift from saturated fats in the diet to mono- and polyunsaturated fats, and California Avocados can help to meet that goal too.

For our Avocado Key Lime Pie Smoothie Bowl, we took a traditional Key Lime Pie and gave it an “extreme” makeover, turning it from a decadent dessert to something you could feel good about serving to your family that still tastes delicious. We love it for breakfast, but by no means should you limit yourself to the morning meal. This smoothie bowl can do double duty as a snack … or triple duty as a better-for-you dessert.
Vanilla Greek yogurt and agave add a subtle sweetness to every spoonful, and the nutrient-dense California Avocado provides a pretty green color while contributing good monounsaturated fats and nearly 20 nutrients including vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber.

The Smoothie Bowl Coloring Cookbook

Several months ago, we published The Smoothie Bowl Coloring Cookbook: Healthy Recipes and Playful Mandala Food Designs for Kids and Adults! Tapping into two hot trends—smoothie bowls and adult coloring—we created the book to encourage families to cook together, eat together and color together.

Our first-of-its-kind coloring cookbook includes 10 nutritious and delicious smoothie bowl recipes including our Avocado Key Lime Pie Smoothie Bowl, 10 corresponding mandala-style food designs, 5 bonus coloring pages, and a how-to guide for making smoothie bowls. We’re offering the book as a free download, so stop by our site for your copy.

What are you waiting for? Grab your fresh California Avocado, load your blender, gather your favorite toppings and start blending.