Matcha smoothie bowl with banana and pineapple
Frozen banana, pineapple and 4 g of culinary matcha. A base as thick as soft-serve that holds its toppings instead of swallowing them — ten minutes at the blender.
Preparation
10 min
Total
10 min
Servings
2
Level
Easy
A smoothie bowl is a smoothie so thick you eat it with a spoon, with the toppings sitting on top instead of sinking. Two things usually ruin it: too much liquid, and fresh fruit instead of frozen. Here most of the thickness comes from bananas frozen the day before, and there's only as much milk as the blender needs to get going.
The second trap is colour. Blueberries, blackberries or cherries blended with matcha turn it a greyish brown, so the base uses only pale fruit: banana, and pineapple, whose acidity balances matcha's grassy note. Strongly coloured fruit, such as raspberries, goes on top.
Use culinary matcha — its bold flavour cuts through the banana and yoghurt. Each bowl has 2 g of matcha, or about 60–70 mg of caffeine, the same as a bowl of usucha. This one is for adults, not children.
Ingredients
240 g bananas, ripe, peeled, sliced and frozen (2 bananas)
150 g frozen pineapple chunks
4 g culinary matcha
80–120 ml milk or a plant-based drink, such as oat
100 g thick natural or plant-based yoghurt
70 g kiwi, peeled and sliced (1 kiwi)
60 g fresh raspberries
40 g granola
10 g coconut chips
5 g chia seeds
10 ml honey or maple syrup (optional)
Preparation
1
The day before, or at least 4 hours ahead: peel ripe bananas — the more brown spots on the skin, the sweeter they are — cut them into 1–2 cm slices and freeze them spread out on a plate lined with baking paper so they don't stick. Once frozen, transfer them to a bag. Freeze a few extra slices too, in case the mixture comes out too runny.
2
Ten minutes before serving, put two bowls in the freezer. In a cold bowl the smoothie stays thick for longer.
3
Pour 80 ml of milk into the blender jug, sift the matcha onto it and blend for a few seconds. Whisked by hand, matcha clumps in milk, but the blender blades break it up quickly. Sprinkled onto frozen fruit, it would stay in green clumps.
4
Add the yoghurt, bananas and pineapple. Blend in short bursts, switching the blender off in between to scrape the mixture down from the sides with a spatula. Add the rest of the milk 10 ml at a time, and only if the blades start spinning freely. If your blender struggles, leave the fruit to soften for 5 minutes.
5
The mixture is ready when it has the texture of soft-serve ice cream and a spoon leaves a clear trail in it. If it's too runny, add a few of the spare frozen banana slices and blend again. Taste, and sweeten with honey or maple syrup only if the bananas weren't ripe enough.
6
Divide the mixture between the chilled bowls and smooth the top with a spoon.
7
Arrange the toppings in rows: kiwi, raspberries, granola, coconut and chia. Lay them on lightly without pressing them in — the thick base will hold them up.
8
Eat straight away. After about a quarter of an hour the mixture starts to melt, and the banana and matcha lose their bright colour.
