I like going to Ocean State Job Lot and staring at the wall of Bob’s Red Mill products. Spelt, rye, garbanzo, amaranth, coconut, chia, freekeh, buckwheat, 10 bean soup mix! So many grains, seeds, and flours, nuts and beans…it’s like an infinite wall of healthy cooking possibilities. I’ve been looking at the more exotic flours for a while now and have talked myself out of hazelnut flour over and over again (because you know I’ll be pairing that with chocolate, in a tart, and definitely with whipped cream – not exactly healthy). These flours tend to be expensive, so when I buy one I have to commit to using it and giving it a fair shake. It took me months to use my crack open my coconut flour, and at $11/bag, the quinoa flour really had something to live up to. But, quinoa’s been my grain du jour lately, and I enjoyed my quinoa chocolate cookies enough to give the flour a whirl. I don’t have a problem with gluten, but I do realize that eating these healthier grains has lots of benefits, so I’m making an effort to get away from wheat flour and incorporate them into my everyday cooking.
i knew I had a bag of berries floating around in the freezer, and so my Google search began for something with quinoa flour and berries. Lo and behold, I came across a recipe on http://www.feastie.com; it called for some ingredients I didn’t have, so after a little substituting I ended up with 12 nice little muffins that are actually good enough for me to serve at my next brunch – huzzah! They call for a cream cheese filling that is completely optional; they would be just as good without it, but it added some interest to the flavor as well as the overall look. The quinoa flour has a distinct flavor that reminds me somehow of buckwheat; at first some might find it off-putting, but I like it, and I think it grows on you. These are a not-to-sweet, lemony muffin, and would be perfect with a cup of coffee.
here’s the recipe:
Quinoa Lemon Berry Muffins
Yield: 12 muffins
preheat oven to 400 & line muffin tins with paper
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups quinoa flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- pinch of sea salt
- 1/2 cup sugar (original called for cane sugar; I used regular)
- Zest of 1 lemon
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 large egg
- 1/3 cup milk (original recipe called for almond, but I didn’t have any on hand, so used 1% cow’s milk)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup frozen berries (mine were a raspberry, blackberry & blueberry mix)
- Optional Filling:
- 3 tablespoons cream cheese (I didn’t have enough so subbed 1T of it with plain greek Fage yogurt)
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest (I didn’t have enough, so I used lemon juice)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
I made 12 smallish muffins. The original recipe says to fill tins 1/2 way with batter, add the filling, and then cover with the other half of the batter. That was a little confusing to me, since you normally only fill muffin tins 3/4 way full. Feastie also advised completely covering the cream cheese filling with the 2nd round of batter; I had nowhere near enough batter for that, so I ended up with a ‘dollop’ of batter on top of each muffin with filling clearly showing. I kind of liked the way the filling looks poking out of the top of the muffins in my finished product, so I wouldn’t stress about it. They’re muffins. They don’t have to be neat!
bake for 20 minutes.
revised from original recipe on feastie.com
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