X

Baking With Quinoa – Surprisingly Nutritious Desserts

Quinoa can be easily substituted for flour, transforming any baked dish into a healthy one. Experiment with this super food to make your desserts more nutritious.

Baking is fun, the joy of hearing your oven ‘ting’ is amazing. The warm smell that spreads across the home when cakes being baked and the anticipation of cookies cooling and crisping on the racks is the definition of comfort. But baked desserts come with the added weight of not only sugar and empty calories, but also gluten and empty carbs for many who are trying to eat clean. There is a lot of ways we can make baking more nutritious – sneaking in vegetables, lowering the sugar with substitutes etc. But the best way to add goodness to baked desserts is adding in Quinoa.

Because not only is Quinoa is a whole grain and high in fibre, It is a good source protein too. The best part is that its also naturally gluten free. This super food is packed with vitamins, and minerals and is high in magnesium, potassium, zinc, and iron as well. It’s almost like adding a power to your bakes when you’re adding quinoa.

You can substitute quinoa or quinoa flour for grains and grain flours in recipes. Quinoa offers a bold and nutty flavor and forms a creamy texture after blending and whisking. The effect on texture that quinoa  has is moist and gooey in small amounts and cakey in larger quantities.

You can toast and grind quinoa into flour for cookies and biscuits – and use it in addition to white flour or whole wheat ones or rice flour. For Cakes and Brownies you can add cooked quinoa directly into the batter. You can even make sweets like fudge by blending the cooked grain into the mixture.

You can even use popped crunchy quinoa on cookies as a topping or in icing as a interesting garnish. Quinoa is quickly becoming a household pantry staple. Once you know the basics, Quinoa can be used to enhance the texture, flavor and nutritional content of many things, especially desserts… Experiment away!

Related Articles

Comment: