hot for food

I am surprised how many people still don’t know about quinoa! When I mention it aloud, people go… huh? Well, you need to know about it. It is an ancient whole grain, and is considered to be a complete protein. Technically, though it is a seed. But it replaces grains in recipes and cooks the same way. It is AMAZING! It’s cheap, versatile, and completely healthy for you. AND most importantly, it doesn’t hurt my gut! It is my favorite food. I vow to try more interesting recipes using this super ingredient. I even want to try baking with it.

I found this recipe linked from a Facebook post of fellow blogger Sweet On Veg. I cooked up a whole box of quinoa for this Quinoa Taco Salad and ate it all myself over the course of a few days.

Credit goes to Karina, the Gluten-Free Goddess. She is incredible. Lots of foodies know about this amazing site and I check back often, because she has a lot of gluten-free AND vegan recipes, including a lot of baked goods. Now I’m not 100% G-free, but I am experimenting with it. I think we could all stand to lighten up on the refined sugars, flours, and yeast. Check out Gluten-Free Goddess for some ideas and give this salad a try!

This was one of those baking episodes I anticipated would be a wasteful disaster. With my luck, upside down cupcakes were gonna stick to the pan like mad! Luckily, I was wrong. They turned out beautifully. It all started with half a bag of cherries being left in the fridge for too long. They were a day away from being no good, so I saved them from a rotten death and turned them into pretty Upside Down Cherry Vanilla Almond Cakes.
You could make this even easier and use a box cake mix, but I followed my Vanilla Bean Cupcake recipe.

You also need:
2 cups of pitted and halved cherries
12 tsp raw sugar
1/4 cup toasted almond slices.

Prepare a muffin pan by buttering (I used, Earth Balance) each muffin cup. Place cherry pieces at the bottom of each so there is little space and sprinkle each with 1 tsp of raw sugar. Pour cake batter into the muffin cups and bake at  350 F for 20-25 minutes. You can toast the almond slices in a pan on low heat with some brown sugar or raw sugar until brown. Make sure you allow the cakes to cool for at least 10-15 minutes before turning them out onto a cooling rack. It was a bit tricky. In my case they didn’t all come out of the pan at once. It took a few turns to get all 12 cakes out of the pan. Lastly, sprinkle each cake with almond slices.

p.s. apologies to Greg P for tempting you with these cakes and making them appear forbidden to eat. Next time you can have all of ‘em buddy!