Cranberry Almond Quinoa Bars

We've been trying to incorporate healthier snacks into our regimen over here at the Hoff House, and this one is a winner.  These Cranberry Almond Quinoa are nutrient dense, highly satisfying, and are incredibly easy to make.

the finished product, topped with some peanut butter

I found some recipes similar to this on the internet, but some of them were really confusing and/or poorly written (not specifying if the amount of quinoa needed was dry or cooked, for example).  So, I decided to do one of my classic recipe re-boots and come up with something great.

For these bars you will need:

• 1 C. uncooked quinoa
• 4 eggs (or the equivalent of egg substitute)
• 1/3 C. of some kind of milk.  I used Vanilla soy milk, but I think almond milk would be good too, it might enhance the almond taste
• 1/3 C. honey
• 1 tsp (or thereabouts) Vanilla extract
• 1 Tlbsp. Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 C.  almonds (you can use any kind of nut or opt for no nuts)
• 1/2 C.  dried fruit.  I used cranberries, but you could use raisins, apricots, apples, anything you'd like.

You'll also need parchment paper.  This silicone infused paper provides great non-stick protection you can put right in the oven.

Step One:

•  Preheat the oven to 375.
• Lightly grease an 8x8 pan, then line it with parchment paper.  

I used olive oil spray to grease my pan.

As for the parchment paper, you can simply make a sling by cutting the paper to 8 inches wide, making the length long enough to hang over the sides, but I opted for complete coverage.  cut a square at least 12x12" and then cut into the corners by a couple inches.  

 Now place the parchment into the greased pan, with the cut corners in the.... um, corners of course.  The sections you cut should overlap, giving you complete parchment coverage.  You might have to cut a little deeper to get everything settled correctly.  It won't be pretty, but it doesn't need to be.  It just has to keep your bars from sticking to the pan.

Step Two - 

• Cook your 1 cup of quinoa according to the package directions, and let it cool completely.

Step Three - 

• Beat the 4 eggs in a large bowl
• Add in the milk, cinnamon, salt, vanilla, and honey
• Mix thoroughly

there are cinnamon clumps here, but they were eventually beaten into submission

 Step Four - 

• Add in your fruit and nuts.  I love the combo of almonds and cranberries.  Next time I think I'll do apples, and maybe banana chips. 

 Step Five - 

• Stir in the cooled quinoa 
• Pour the mixture into your prepared pan

 Step Six - 

• Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes.  The honey will make the finished product look NOT done in the middle.  Check the edges, they should be dry and pulling away from the parchment a bit.  If you touch the middle it should be damp, but no quinoa should come off on your finger. 

the middle still looks wet, but it's done.

 Step Seven - the beauty of the parchment

• using the edges of the parchment, lift the (soon to be) bars from the pan and place on a cooling rack as soon as possible.  
• Pull the edges down to help the cooling process

De-panning would be difficult without the parchment paper

• When cool - cut into bars.  You can make them whatever size you'd like.

By themselves, these are a chewy, slightly crunchy very satisfying and filling snack or light breakfast.  To pump them up a bit, smear some nut butter (I had peanut) on top.  I also heated mine up a bit to slightly melt the pb.  Delicious!

I ate one of the bars for breakfast, and was full (and full of energy) until lunch. 

Notes on nutrition: 

For the health benefits of the honey and cranberries you can check out my earlier blog post here.

Quinoa - 2013 has become known as the Year of Quinoa (see the link below), but it is actually an ancient food.  The Inca of South America have been enjoying quinoa for centuries.  Inca warriors ate quinoa to help maintain strength and stamina.  Usually classified a grain, it's actually a seed, and is related to swiss chard.  Quinoa was recently declared a kosher food, and can be eaten during the Jewish high holidays.  Quinoa contains 9 amino acids, and has a similar protein content to cow's milk.  It is full of riboflavin, which can help prevent migraines.  Quinoa is, of course, gluten free, and has been shown to be well tolerated by those suffering with IBS. It is high in fiber, iron, and magnesium.  You can learn a lot more about quinoa at this site.

Almonds - There's something about almonds that make them the ultimate pick-me-up.  Countless times I've been struggling to stay awake during a lecture or at work, and a handful of almonds saved the day.  They are Justin's new favorite snack, and he often snacks on a few on his commute home to stay awake and alert on the horrible 91 fwy.  Almonds help lower bad cholesterol, and are high in fiber.  They are full of B vitamins, which help in cell function.  Almonds are an excellent source of manganese, potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, and selenium, and are full of vitamin E. Here is a site full of information on almonds.

Spring-tastic cupcakes

With Easter just around the corner, Justin and I headed over to our friends' place to color Easter eggs with their girls.  I decided some cupcakes were a necessity for this evening, and set out to make some, with the appropriate accoutrements, of course.  Here is the result...

And here's how you can make some for your Springtime or Easter celebrations...

Step One: make some cupcakes.  I admit, I used a box cake mix.  And I'm ok with that.  If you feel inspired to make cupcakes from scratch, you are my hero.

Did you know Duncan Hines started out as a restaurant critic?

Step Two: Make some frosting.  While you can get a decent cake or cupcake from a box, The same can not be said for frosting.  And frosting is a snap to make, you probably have most of the ingredients in your kitchen already.  I found this recipe in my recipe box on an index card.  I'm assuming it came from my grandma... it's a pretty standard mix.

**Remember, that this frosting is made with butter and cream cheese, which are dairy.  Whatever you frost with this creation will need to be refrigerated.  Not only will the frosting melt if it gets too warm, but the cream cheese will spoil, and nobody wants to eat that.  

You will need:

• 1 lb (that's two of the 8 oz. blocks) of cream cheese.  It needs to be room temp, so set it out on the counter for a while
• 1 cup (or 2 sticks) of butter.  Also room temp.  I usually use unsalted butter for baking, but all I had was the salted kind, and it came out great, so... use whatever you have.
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp. (or thereabouts) of vanilla (or whatever flavor you choose) extract.  Vanilla is pretty standard for cream cheese frosting, but you can use any flavor you'd like.  When I made cookies last week I used lemon extract in the icing and it was delicious. You could also use peppermint, and when combined with the chocolate cupcakes it would be chocolate mint.  yum.
• food coloring - I always use gel colors when color food, they are much more concentrated than liquid food coloring.  This means you don't have to use as much, and they won't water down your mixes.  This is the exact green I used for my grass.

image borrowed from Wilton.com

If you're lucky enough to have a stand mixer, making the frosting is a piece of (cup)cake.  I, unfortunately only have a hand mixer.  It's still pretty simple, but not fun for my carpel tunnel ridden hands.  Here's how the frosting comes together:

• Cream the cream cheese and the butter together until you have a smooth, homogenous mix.  
• Add in the vanilla, and mix until combined.
• Add in the powdered sugar.  Make sure you start the mixer off on its lowest speed so that you don't have a powdered sugar EXPLOSION all over your kitchen.  No one wants that. 
• Be patient, it takes a few minutes to incorporate all the powdered sugar, but it will all come together into a creamy bowl full of delicious-ness.  Give it a taste, if you want to add a little more extract, now is the time
• add a few drops of the gel coloring, start off with just a LITTLE BIT.  You can always add more, but you can't take away. When you're using green there's a fine line between spring time grass and Nickelodeon slime.  The former is great for these cupcakes, the latter is useful only for 10 year old boy birthday cakes.  Green can quickly make food unappetizing.

Here's my frosting in the bowl:

Step Three - Loading up the frosting. Let me just say that I don't like pastry bags.  Maybe it's my small, child-sized hands, maybe it's the weird cone shape... I don't know.  But whenever I've tried to use them, I made a huge mess with the frosting always spewing up the top of the bag.  So, I use zip top bags.  Mine are from Target.  Snip a small piece off of one of the bottom corners and attach your piping tip like normal.  I used the small star tip.  Load up a reasonable amount of frosting into the bag and seal the top up MOST of the way.  Smoosh the frosting down to the tip and you're ready to go.

Try to get as much air out of the top of the bag before you start

Step Four - the piping.  I started at the outside of the cupcake and spiraled my way into the center.  I wasn't really worried about covering every inch of cake, because I just figured it would look like dirt.

Step Five - the finishing touch.  I have a weakness for Cadbury mini eggs.  Not the big ones with the fake egg yolk inside, those are a bit too sugary sweet for me.  I'm talking about these:

mmm the creamy crunchy delicious-ness

There's just something about that creamy chocolate and the crunchy candy coating.  They are my favorite Easter candy.  I thought the little pastel colored eggs would look cute on top, and I was right!

I loaded the cupcakes into my cupcake holder and we were off ...

 Miss Sonora gave them a rating of delicious!