SALTED CARAMEL CACAO NIB SMOOTHIE

This is my favorite kind of recipe. It tastes like dessert, but is actually really nutritious. It’s something you can make for breakfast everyday and feel good about it.

The ingredients are pretty simple. Soft ripe pears add a floral sweetness, while toasted pecans and dates add a rich caramel flavor. The smoothie is finished with cacao nibs and a sprinkling of Colima Sea Salt, which enhances the sweetness of the smoothie. It’s thick and luscious, sweet and salty, but also filling and delicious.

If you’ve never had cacao nibs, they are cacao beans that have been dried and fermented, and have a rich chocolatey flavor. You can buy them sweetened if you want, but I like the unsweetened variety for things like this — they add a bitter chocolate crunch that helps balance out the sweetness of the rest of the ingredients. You should blend your smoothie first, then add them in at the last second, so you have a bit of crunch and texture. It’s kind of like chocolate chip ice cream, for real. Then, sprinkle on some Colima Sea Salt for extra crunch, and to bring out all the other awesome flavors.

As far as liquid, I typically use unsweetened vanilla almond milk, but I’ve used coconut milk, and even cashew milk. I’ve never used dairy milk in this because I don’t like dairy in my smoothies, but if you do, I’m sure it would work fine. This is why smoothies are one of my favorite things; they’re pretty impossible to mess up.