Steemit Culinary Challenge #38 - Vegan Smoothie Bowl with Salted Cinnamon Chia Granola

America steals so many great foods from other countries.

America's copycat style makes it hard to showcase American vegan food. However, there's always some trendy new item in boutique cafés. Whether it's avocado toast or acai bowls. bagel balls, or poke bowls. Seriously, there's always something new and trendy and hip, until enough people discover it and it becomes very un-hip.

Here's my vegan take on one of those trendy American foods, the Smoothie Bowl. It's a simple and beautiful way to start (or end) the day.

The base is made of fresh local peaches that my family and I picked last weekend, along with sliced bananas and rich coconut milk.

The combination of toppings makes the Smoothie Bowl. A balance of crunch, chew, sweet, tart, and nutty elevates the cool smoothie base below to a level you just don't get when you drink a smoothie out of a glass.

I topped my Smoothie Bowl with loads of goodies:

• homemade salted cinnamon chia granola,
• goji berries
• flaked coconut
• local bee pollen
• hemp hearts
• diced peaches
• diced mango

Here's how to make the salted cinnamon chia granola

Ingredients

• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1/4 c chia seeds
• 1/4 c cacao nibs
• 1 T cinnamon
• 1 t sea salt
• 1/4 c raisins
• 1/2 cup unsweetened peanut butter
• 1/4 cup local honey

Directions

• Mix all of the ingredients together with a big spoon
• Press onto a parchment-paper lined baking sheet
• Bake at 295°F for about 20 minutes, until your kitchen smells fabulous
• Once cool, use your spoon to break up the granola and store in an airtight container until you're ready to use it!

Here's how to make the Smoothie Bowl Base

• Toss 3 frozen cut-up peaches and 2 sliced frozen bananas into the blender.

• Add about 2/3 can of coconut milk (including the coconut cream) and begin to blend.

• Add more coconut milk as needed to help it along, and if you have a tamper, use it to get all the fruit chunks blended up.

• That's it!

Assembly!

• Once you have your smoothie base finished, you can begin to assemble the toppings!
• Pour your smoothie into a big bowl (or two) (or just one) :)
• However you like, load it up with toppings.

I used, from left to right

• Unsweetened flaked coconut
• Salted cinnamon chia granola
• Goji berries
• Local bee pollen
• Hemp hearts
• Local peaches
• Diced mango

Once this was sitting pretty on the table, we grabbed four spoons and ate straight from the bowl. Someone may or may not have even licked it clean.

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Thanks to @woman-onthe-wing for hosting this challenge, and to @gringalicious, @sirwinchester, and @englishtchrivy for sponsoring! Also thanks to @heart-to-heart for this great challenge theme and for being our guest judge!

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Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please do check out my blog.

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All content and photos by @jaymorebeet, taken on August 11, 2017 with a Canon 7D Mark II.