I remembered how my kids turned their nose to the baked quinoa the first time. Afterwards, I hesitated over whether or not to try different recipes. But I still sneaked in some cooked quinoa into muffins, cookies and bread from time to time. This morning I was tired of seeing leftover quinoa (from yesterday’s lunch) and blackberry chia jam (from the other day) sitting inside the refrigerator and decided to use them all. This is how I came up with these squares…
Ingredients:
1 cup cooked organic quinoa
1 cup organic oat flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
3/4 cup organic unsweetened apple sauce
About 1 cup blackberry chia jam (see note)
First, line the Pyrex 8×8″ glass bakeware with parchment paper and lightly brush the parchment paper with a little bit of avocado oil. Second, preheat the oven to 350F.
In a bowl, combine the quinoa, oat flour, cinnamon, and baking powder. Stir in honey and apple sauce. The mixture resembled sticky pancake batter.
Layer about 2/3 of the batter into the bakeware and flatten it with a spatula. Then spread the jam and layer the remanning batter. Bake for about 30 minutes. Remove the parchment paper and leave the baked quinoa on the cooling rack. Wait until it’s completely cool down and slice to your preferred size. I cut mine into 16 squares.
These quinoa oat squares weren’t very sweet, just my personal preference. You can definitely add more honey or maple syrup for a sweeter version. They are perfect for breakfast as well as snack on the go. I kept them in the refrigerator afterwards since the temperature suddenly went up to 90 in my neighborhood.
Note:
I used white quinoa and cooked them according to the instruction. I also grinded the rolled oats in the food processor to make oat flour.
Blackberry chia jam:
About 15 oz blackberries or berries of your preferrence
7-8 chopped pitted dates
2-3 tablespoon chia seeds
In a small sauce pan, add blackberries and chopped dates and simmer in the lowest flame for about 30 minutes. After turning off
the stove, I just used a fork to break the berries apart and added chia seeds. The jam wasn’t very sweet. You can adjust the sweeteness to your preference.
For leftover jam, my daughter happily mixed them with a Stonyfield grass fed plain yogurt and 1 tablespoon of honey, and poured the mixture into the ice pop mold. After dinner, she was proud to show and happily ate her ice pop with a big smile^^.