Smoothie bowls are getting popular in Singapore and the one who started this trend was probably Project Açaí with their super delicious Açaí bowls. At $9.30, it isn’t that expensive but definitely not a comfortable price to pay too often. They do sell their frozen Açaí so you could recreate it at home, but if you wish you could do it with other fruit bases too!

Firstly, you need to have a blender. Forget about this and just pay $9.30 at Project Açaí if you do not have one (though this is not a good excuse. You can buy a bullet blender almost anywhere!). It’s best to have a powerful blender like Vitamix for best results, but my super old and basic bullet hand blender works just fine too.

I bought my first ever pack of frozen berries from FairPrice Finest at $12.45 for 500g. These are Organic Mixed Berries from New Zealand. Now just think about it – “fresh” fruits can easily cost way more than this per gram and frozen fruits are actually frozen when the fruit is at optimum ripeness, sealing in the nutritional values. “Fresh” fruits from the shelves may be on it’s way to decomposition and isn’t really that good. Moreover, if the berries are to be used for smoothies, you need to freeze them anyway so frozen berries are the way to go! I like how it can keep in my freezer for way longer, so I don’t have to throw away any expired berries anymore.

I’m actually not super into organic food especially since we do not know the source – it could be not really 100% organic you know? Most organic labelled foods aren’t 100% organic and could be not much better than the regular version. I’ll only favour organic food if I really know the source is legit (like if I visited the farm and got my produce there) or if the organic version really tastes better. For imported berries, there’s no way to know. I only bought the organic berries because that’s all they have there.

For more affordable berries, Giant Supermarket has mixed berries for $5.95 and Phoon Huat sells a variety of mixed and single berries too.

Smoothie Bowl Recipe:

• Half cup of frozen berries
• Half ripe banana
• A splash of coconut milk/ almond milk (optional)

Place everything in a blender and blend till smooth.

Berries are usually sour so to sweeten up naturally, I added half a banana in my smoothie base. You can use a frozen banana if you wish, but my blender probably can’t take that so room temperature banana is a better idea for me. I highly recommend adding the banana because it makes a lot of difference. The banana taste was barely detectable and it only serves to bring out a sweeter berry taste in the smoothie base.

The coconut milk was just to provide some liquid so that my blender will move. If you have a super strong blender, you could omit it and have a more solid base!

Toppings are entirely up to you. Here are some suggestions:

• Homemade Granola
• Crispy coconut
• Wolfberries
• Chia seeds
• Ground flax seeds
• Fresh berries and fruits – banana, grapes, papaya, mango, apple, pear etc
• Raw honey
• Bee pollen
• Cacao Nibs

Variety is endless and you don’t have to eat the same thing everyday!

Raspberry based smoothie bowl