Thursday, July 17, 2014

Cubicle kitchen: Pomegranate Chocolate Quinoa Cookies

Even though I'm never the first to try one of the new food trends, I do get there eventually most of the time.  Especially when it comes to overnight health sensations.  So forgive me, because there's going to be a lot of quinoa coming up in my cubicle kitchen.

I told you about my quinoa-stuffed baked tomatoes the other week.  Well, after filling the tomatoes with not just quinoa but onions, spinach, and an egg, there was still plenty of quinoa left for other purposes.  And by other purposes, I usually mean baking treats.  Turns out, there are all kinds of uses for quinoa in goodies, and for the most part you can treat it like you would oatmeal.  As in, when making oatmeal muffins, substitute the same amount of cooked quinoa for the uncooked oatmeal called for.

Because I also had some pomegranate arils collected, I decided to go with a cookie packed with healthy excuses to eat one more.  Between the vitamins in the pomegranate, the antioxidants of dark chocolate, and quinoa's protein power, this is practically health food.  Since breakfast cookies also seem to be pretty trendy, I think you could pass these off as one of those too.

Pomegranate Chocolate Quinoa Cookies
Recipe from hidden ponies: Chocolate Pomegranate Oatmeal Cookies

My notes:
  • I chopped up Brookside Dark Chocolate Pomegranate instead of just chocolate chunks to amp up the pomegranate factor
  • I substituted equal amounts of cooked quinoa for quick-cooking oats
  • The quinoa makes the cookies really moist, to the point of falling apart; I would suggest maybe adding a little flour, or some of the originally called for oatmeal, and cooking for a few more minutes or perhaps cooking them in a mini muffin tray for soft cookie bites
  • I used an ice cream scoop to get these onto the sheet because the dough is quite wet
  • Some cookies don't need the two inches of space between them on the cookie sheet, but these definitely do because they spread quite a bit

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