When I opened my fridge yesterday I was pleased. Most of the leftovers were gone and the fridge was almost ready to be re-filled with food.
The only leftover in it was a container with cooked red quinoa in it.
After discovering a few days earlier, that cooked quinoa can be used in baked goods, imagine how thrilled I was to find out that THIS is what i had in the fridge.
Woo-hoo, an excuse to make something sweet! I’m not going to talk about the fact that hubby was less than impressed since he wants me to put a pause on my sweet baking, let’s concentrate on the positive then, my quinoa moist chocolate muffins!
It’s weird, right? using quinoa in sweet pastries, but hey, not only that this worked pretty darn well, it was super easy and did not require a stand mixer. Just my small chopper and a spoon. So let’s regroup for a minute now, we have quinoa which is good for you, gluten free, considered a superfood and happens to be readily available in my fridge, we have my small food chopper which means I will have almost no dishes to wash, and we have one eager me, dieing to find out how sweet quinoa muffins taste like. Adding 2 super excited kids to the mix just made this one a no-brainer. Sorry hubby, I’m making these – apparently, they’re good for you.
So yeah, I mixed the ingredients in my chopper (mini food processor) and poured the batter into my silicone muffin cups, covered with chocolate ganache and there I had it – Super Quinoa Muffins.
So. Moist. They. Are. To. Die. For.
Recipe was originally adapted from “Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood” Book, written by the two lovely ladies at PatriciaAndCarolyn.Com
- 1 Cup Cooked White or Red Quinoa
- ¼ Cup Milk
- ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
- ½ Cup Coconut Oil (Solid or Liquid form) - Can be substituted with vegetable oil or butter
- 2 Eggs
- ¾ Cups White Granulated Sugar
- ½ Cup Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
- ½ tsp Baking Powder
- ¼ tsp Baking Soda
- ⅓ Cup Whipping Cream
- ¼ Cup Semisweet Chocolate Chips
- Preheat oven to 350F (180C) and prepare 12 muffin cups rubbed with butter or coconut oil to avoid sticking.
- In a food processor or food chopper place the cooked quinoa, milk, vanilla and coconut oil and pulse until you get a smooth batter that resembles paste texture.
- Add in the eggs, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda and pulse a few more times until the batter is even and everything is fully incorporated.
- Divide the batter evenly between the 12 muffin cups (about ½ -⅔ muffin cup full) and bake in the preheated oven for 25- 30 minutes (a cake tester/ toothpick should come out dry)
- Bringing the whipping cream to a gentle boil in a small saucepan
- Turn heat off and add in the chocolate chips, stirring constantly until you get chocolate ganache.
- Top each muffin with about 1 tsp ganache and spread a bit on the top.
- Store airtight container in the fridge for a maximum of 3 days and let it reach room temperature before serving if not served on the same day.
Isn’t it amazing?!? Those look fantastic! Weird how one of my readers tried making my quinoa cake in muffins, and they fell, yet yours look perfect. Odd… I’m sure these went over really well though! 😀
I find that muffins (especially ones with no flour) tend to fall when they are put into the oven when it’s not hot enough yet. Or in other words, the oven temperature is too low and causes them to fall. There are so many oven brands out there with different thermostats in them, it gets tricky especially when you don’t have the gluten to hold everything together 🙂
I can’t get these to work. I am using applesauce has an egg substitute, is that my problem? they just fall and don’t cook through
I’m not sure, since I haven’t tried making these with applesauce but I’m thinking it does have to do something with the applesauce.
Applesauce has much more fluids in it than an egg and thus, even though it acts like an egg by helping to bind everything, it also adds fluids, and since this recipe does not use anything to absorb the apple juice from the sauce (like flour or starch), I’d say it’s definitely the applesauce.
Sometimes you can replace an egg with 1/4 cup yogurt, maybe that’s a good solution here? I’m not sure either.
I’d have to play around with it and try.
I made these and they fell apart. I do live in higher elevation. Suggestions??
Hmm, that’s strange. Never happened to me before. If I had to guess I’d say the oven temperature was too low or it wasn’t preheated enough.
Another reason could be extra liquids in the quinoa. Did you use it warm or cold?