Quinoa Bandwagon Part II

I am still trying to get into quinoa.  I still haven't actually made that leap to cook a meal with it, but I've done some more baking with my new cookbook Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood (remember my post last week when I made those crazy cookies?) 

As usual, I changed up the reciped based on what ingredients I had laying around...  So here is my adaptation of Lemon Blueberry Muffins featured on page 129 of the book.

Lemon Raspberry Mini-Muffins
Ingredients:
1/2 cup quinoa
1 cup water
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp grated lemon zest
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
1 large egg
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
30 fresh raspberries, washed and dry
(Bold shows the ingredients that I swapped out)

Method:
Bring the quinoa and water to a boil in a small saucepan.  Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for 10 minutes.  Turn the heat off and leave the covered saucepan on the burner for an additional 15 minutes.  Remove the lid and fluff with a fork - let cool before using in the recipe.

Preheat oven to 400degrees.  Spray 2 mini-muffin trays, or silicone muffin cups with cooking spray.
Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, and stir in the lemon zest and 1 1/4 cups of the cooked quinoa - you'll have about 3/4 cup left over - I kept it and added it to my oatmeal today - was okay I guess ;)
Back to the baking!  In another bowl, whisk together your sugar and oil, then add the yogurt, egg, lemon juice and vanilla.  In the typical way, add your wet ingredients to the dry, but here's another weird thing about this recipe - tells us to stir until "thoroughly blended" which any muffin baker knows ya never do!  Anyways, it did work - but back to the instructions: drop the batter by into your prepared muffin pans.  Push a raspberry into the centre of each muffin.

Chuck into your oven on the centre rack for 24 minutes, until the usual golden tops appear and your toothpic comes out clean. 

Rising nicely!

Let cool and chow down.  Makes 2 1/2 dozen mini muffins.

Make sure to spray the silicon baking cups b/c you will
get burned bottoms!  This is the first time I forgot on these cups!

I took these to work today and they received good reviews.  I am still not 100% sold on this magical ingredient, mainly b/c I don't like the consistency, and I don't like the way the little quinoa seeds seem to go crunchy in the oven - I was warning folks that if they had capped teeth to maybe eat with caution.  The other thing I don't like about quinoa is when that little white membrane c-shaped thinger separates itself from the seed - reminds me of a bug casing or something.  Anyhoo - because quinoa is such a wonderful superfood, I am going to keep trying to eat it and keep you posted on my conversion!