A good friend brought me a surprise gift last week (...I love surprises!).  It was this fantastic book!  I love quinoa and cook with it fairly often, but this book brings quinoa to a whole new level...it's AWESOME!  So I got up early this morning and decided to try some pancakes from the book. (By the way, for those of you who not sure how to pronounce it, its Keen-Wah).

There are quite a few recipes in the book that call for quinoa flour, so I was excited to try it out.  All you do is put quinoa into your wheat grinder and voila...QUINOA FLOUR!  This particular recipe calls for a 1 1/2 cups of quinoa flour which took a  little less than that 1 cup of whole quinoa.  My kids were a little skeptical when they saw the quinoa and the pumpkin puree on the counter, but 3 out of 4 of my children LOVED them!  Hooray! 

I made a few minor adjustments to the recipe

1 1/2 cups quinoa flour

1/4 cup packed brown sugar (I used raw sugar granules that I put in the liquid first to dissolve)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 2/3 cups vanilla soymilk

1 cup pumpkin puree

2 eggs (please be consumer conscious when buying eggs, the best are from a local farmer)

2 TBS olive oil

Combine all the ingredients together until smooth, and pour about 1/4 cup of the batter onto a large non-stick frying pan.  The recipe makes about 14 large pancakes.

For the maple walnut apple topping you'll need

3 apples, peeled and cored

1 TBS coconut olive

2 TBS walnuts

3 TBS maple syrup

Combine all the ingredients in a large saucepan and cook over medium heat until the apples are cooked to the desired consistency. About 15 minutes.