Quinoa Chocolate-Banana Cupcakes

If you're going to bake from American origin and not make the same handful of recipes all the time, you're going to have to look beyond cornmeal.  Quinoa (keen-wah) is one of the staple grains of the Western Hemisphere, and it's starting to appear more frequently in standard supermarkets, both as a whole grain and as a flour.

Quinoa is the seed of the annual flowering forb Chenopodium quinoa, a member of the amaranth family, Amaranthaceae.  This family includes not only amaranth itself, but also tumbleweeds and several species cultivated as ornamental plants.  The plant is not a true grass, so the grain is therefore regarded as a pseudocereal.  In its natural state, the grain is coated in a bitter chemical called saponin, which is toxic to humans.  The grain must therefore be carefully washed before preparation. (Packaged whole grain quinoa is almost always pre-washed.)   C. quinoa has been utilized as a food source in South America for thousands of years, with cultivation dating to around 1500 BCE in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia and Peru.

Quinoa makes a good South American stand-in for a related North American species, C. berlandieri, also known as pitseed goosefoot.  C. berlandieri is one of the only grains known to have been domesticated in the present-day United States, with evidence of cultivation appearing around the same time as its southern cousin.  Pitseed goosefoot has effectively vanished as a cultivated grain in the U.S., although it is still grown in Mexico, primarily as a leaf vegetable under the name huauzontle or red Aztec spinach.

Starting Point: Bob's Red Mill Sour Cream Fudge Cupcakes

For starters, I used peanut oil instead of butter, heating it with a little water and then whisking in the cocoa (Hershey's works fine).  My quinoa flour is Bob's Red Mill Organic Quinoa Flour.  I sifted the flour with the baking power, baking soda, and salt.  Instead of sifting this mixture with sugar, I added 1/2 cup of maple syrup and 1/2 cup of light agave nectar after sifting, and then blended it all together with the cocoa mixture.

I wasn't using eggs, which simplified the final steps in the batter preparation.  After blending in the cocoa mixture, I added two pureed bananas.  The banana is, of course, originally Asian, but the flavor and consistency mimics the North American fruit known as the pawpaw (Asimina triloba).  Pawpaw can be gathered locally in the St. Louis area, but the fruit isn't mature until late summer or early autumn.  I then added vanilla and, instead of sour cream, 1/4 cup of unsweetened coconut milk and 1 teaspoon of white vinegar.

These cupcakes needed about 22 to 23 minutes in my oven, instead of the recommended 20 minutes.  Far from being dry, they turned out extra-moist, almost like a boxed "pudding cake".  Very decadent.  The nutty taste of the quinoa combines well with the cocoa and banana flavors.

These go really well with a peanut butter frosting. To prepare that one either needs to cheat a little and use regular confectioner's sugar (as I did) or hunt down some maple sugar.

It's likely that pitseed goosefoot would have been harvested in the fall in North America, so quinoa-based baked goods such as these cupcakes make an excellent autumn treat.