Quinoa-Banana-Bake

I saw a recipe for a non-vegan, slow-cooker, quinoa, banana "bread"... I had no idea what the texture was actually like, in the picture on the blog featuring the recipe, it looked like a baked oatmeal, maybe slightly more "bready"-- maybe like a bread pudding.

I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden, as I read that recipe, I HAD to make it. I knew I could turn it vegan very easily, but alas, I don't have a slow cooker.

I started googling, "can you use your oven in place of a slow cooker?" After reading some techniques, involving dutch ovens, I decided I could make this without a slow-cooker. I also knew of a recipe to make quinoa in the oven. Whew! All would be okay.

Ingredients:

1 cup of quinoa
1 cup soy milk (could be any non-dairy milk with some fat in it)
1 cup water
1 - 1 and1/2 banana (past ripe)
2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
4 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Here's what I did:

Mashed up the banana
Put the rest of the ingredients in the dutch oven or whatever covered item or cooking that you have (I also have no dutch oven), but I have this covered pyrex-type pan.

I pre-heated the oven, but when I stuck the pyrex in, full of cold ingredients, it needed to heat up again. It was at about 280 for 40 minutes until it finally got to 325.

I cheated and stirred around the time it hit 300.  It looked like it had serious yum potential.

I cooked it for about 90-100 minutes. It looked excellent! It does kind of look like a bread until you dip into it. Then you can SEE the quinoa. Nevermind that, it was excellent!

I don't know why I was craving quinoa, but I was! I ate a lot. I will make it for breakfast sometime when I have company. I will make it again for me. It was super easy! One of three of the little girls tried it and "liked" it.  We'll see if she eats more tomorrow morning--we'll heat it up in the microwave.

Here are the nutrition facts.