Baking gets the serious cold shoulder in January, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Holiday baking is at its peak Thanksgiving through Christmas with pies and cookies, but when the clock strikes midnight on New Years Eve, everything comes to an abrupt halt.

Resolutions mean the annual return to clean eating and with that, it’s a goodbye to dessert. Well, at least temporary one.  How long do resolutions really last anyway?

Too bad my sweet tooth doesn’t follow the calendar. I always like a little bite of something.

It didn’t feel right to bake the usual treats with white flour and lots of butter. On the flip side, I didn’t want to spend time whipping up a “healthy” dessert that didn’t taste like a real dessert.

I’m happy to say that these peanut butter quinoa blondies landed somewhere in the middle. They were just right.

Not too rich and they didn’t hint about their nutritious, non-standard ingredients.  

The blondies used less butter than the typical bar cookie because of the peanut butter. If you’re not a fan of peanuts, you can try another nut butter like almond or cashew.

I didn’t have any quinoa flour in my pantry, but I had actual quinoa.  That meant I could make the quinoa flour.

First, I toasted the grains in a skillet and let them cool to room temperature. Then I used a blender to transform them into flour. I put the flour through a fine mesh strainer, so there were no whole grains that got missed.

After creaming the butters and sugar and adding the eggs and vanilla extract, I folded in the dry ingredients followed by a cup of dark chocolate chunks. My kitchen was filled with the most wonderful smell of peanut butter as they baked.  The blondies turned out with a cakey consistency.

I experimented with cutting them in a standard 16 square grid, and then slicing each of those squares into 4. It was a game of portion size and self-control!

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