Baked Breakfast Quinoa with Plums and Pistachios.

Apparently I am alllllllll about breakfast right now.

I’m also all about cold summer iced teas and taupe booties and neon pink blush and chocolate chip cookies and the week old+ sunflowers on our new cream kitchen table but I’m not forcing all that stuff in your face now am I? At least not yet. The worst (best?) part if that I have like four more breakfast recipes in my backup arsenal at the moment. I hate when I get on a weird food streak and binge blog it.  I don’t even realize it until it’s happening.

This recipe and the last are worth it though – because the waffles are kind of sort of like dessert. In a way. Or at least a weekend breakfast. And these breakfast bowls – which are CLEARLY healthy because they have the word quinoa in the title – are more like a weekday breakfast. So you can feel good about yourself and start the day of right. <insert every other cliché here>

I do this really annoying this where I still call quinoa, or should I say that I still pronounce quinoa, as it sounds – like kee-noh-ah. Mostly in the privacy of my own home. I accidentally on purpose trash up other words too, like acai which I still call ah-kai, any and all the time. But the worst was this past weekend when I had to do a little interview for the book and I started to say quinoa but was actually saying kee-noh-ah and it was live and I sort of wanted to die because then I really sounded like I had no idea what I was talking about. Which, let’s be honest, I usually do not. But I do know quinoa.

Even if the rest of the world pronounces it weirdly. It’s not me!

After seeing these breakfast quinoa flakes a few weeks ago, I was craving a breakfast like that. Maybe because fall is kinda sorta around the corner but also really because it just looked SO good.

And I kind of modeled this here after one of my all-time favorite breakfasts – the coconut milk quinoa breakfast bowl. There was a period when I ate this for months on end. Like no variety, which is insane me for, the queen of boredom. I think perhaps the best part of that breakfast, besides all of the texture of course, is the length of time it keeps me FULL. Seriously. We are talking hours. Like maybe five or six. Which so rarely happens. It has to be a combo of the nuts and quinoa and coconut milk – it isn’t offensively filling to the point when you feel stuffed, but it’s so satisfying that you might not think about lunch until, well… lunch.

For me, that’s unusual.

This is just the same! Maybe even slightly better, because I added a dollop of yogurt. Most filling breakfast ever.

But the real question is… why even bake the quinoa? It only takes like 15 minutes on the stovetop so baking seems rather pointless. And at times it might be. But I also really love the final result once this quinoa is baked – it’s ridiculously cinnamon-y and also takes on a slightly stronger crunch than the quinoa that absorbed the liquid on the stovetop – but not in a dried out kind of way. It also allows for other fabulous options like adding fruit to the quinoa before baking (let’s go with apples?) and have them get all soft and delicious inside the baked grains.

In this case, I stewed some plums quickly for the topping because I don’t want plum season to ever ever end ever. Maybe it already has ended but I just can’t stop eating them in every which way. Adore adore! I wouldn’t mind faceplanting into a bowl full of those. Plus, I think things like quinoa and oatmeal and cooked breakfast-y grains get better with boatloads of textural toppings, like nuts and fruit and yogurt and seeds and…. chocolate. Of course.

I left that one off this time but not on purpose.

Next time… add chocolate.

Baked Breakfast Quinoa with Plums and Pistachios

Yield: 2 to 4

Total Time: 1 hour hr

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5 from 7 votes

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Ingredients

• 1 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 cup chopped pistachios
• milk, for serving
• yogurt, for serving
• stewed plums
• 4 plums, sliced
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup honey

Instructions 

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a baking dish with nonstick spray.
• In a bowl, stir together the quinoa, milk, water, vanilla, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg. Pour it into the baking dish and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and stir well (to incorporate any of the milk laying on top), then bake for 15 to 20 more minutes until most of the liquid is absorbed.

stewed plums

• While the quinoa is cooking, make the plums. Add the plums, water and honey to a saucepan over medium-low heat. Bring the mixture to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the plums are soft and juicy, about 5 minutes.
• To serve the quinoa, scoop some into a bowl and pour milk over top. My favorite here is coconut milk! Add some yogurt and pistachios on too, then spoon some of the plums and juice over it. Devour.

Course: Breakfast

Cuisine: American

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ugh. it’s just so pretty!