This fruit- and honey-sweetened quinoa granola is an easy win for breakfast. You can make a big batch of it, just as you can with this coco-nutty granola, store it in a jar in the cupboard and serve it with homemade yogurt or kefir for a quick, easy breakfast.

Quinoa granola is also a fantastic early food for toddlers, as it is relatively easy for little bellies to digest and it’s a good source of magnesium and bone-building phosphorus.

Feeding Babies and Toddlers

When feeding babies and toddlers, it’s easy to get stuck into the creatively limited options of “kid food” of easy and bland, but palatable foods like breaded chicken fingers, cheese and pasta dishes. If your kids will eat, why mess with a good thing, right?

Babyhood and toddlerhood presents the perfect opportunity to expose your children to a wide variety of foods, flavors and textures, which not only nourishes their little bodies with a wider variety of nutrients but also helps to train their palates so that they learn to enjoy many foods rather than just a few.

That’s the crux of Nourished Beginnings Baby Food, a gorgeous new cookbook that focuses on introducing wholesome, nutrient-dense first foods for babies that go beyond the bland purees and dull “kid food” to presenting delicious meals that are not only age-appropriate first foods, but that also present a wide variety of flavors.

It’s this book that I’ve leaned on in introducing new foods to my own baby who is now nearing a year old.

Fruit and Honey Sweetened Soaked Quinoa Granola

It's easy to make a big batch of this granola, and then store it in a jar for an easy breakfast on the go. It's lovely served with homemade milk kefir or homemade yogurt. This recipe is reprinted from Renee Kohley's cookbook, Nourished Beginnings Baby Food.

Servings: quarts

Print Recipe

Ingredients

6 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
2 cups quinoa
2 cups raw nuts such as pecans almonds or walnuts, finely chopped or pulsed in the food processor
2 teaspoons sea salt
Juice of 2 lemons
1 cup coconut flour available here
1/2 cup melted friendly fat such as butter coconut oil or avocado oil
1/3 cup raw honey Order it here.
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
5 cups chopped seasonal fruit such as apples strawberries, figs and pears

Instructions

Put the oats, quinoa, chopped nuts, sea salt and lemon juice in a large mixing bowl. Add water to cover, combine and let the mixture soak 8 to 12 hours. This soaking process breaks down phytic acid in the grain, makes it easier to digest, and makes the nutrients more available to be absorbed.
After the grains and nuts have soaked, drain the liquid and return them to the mixing bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and combine.
If you have a dehydrator, spread the granola onto your dehydrator trays and dehydrate at 135°F overnight (or over the course of a day). I tend to soak the mixture during the day and dehydrate overnight. If you are using an oven, spread the granola on baking sheets, set your oven at the lowest heat (such as 150°F ) and stir throughout the day. Another option is to set the oven at a higher temperature, such as 300°F or so, and bake the granola for about an hour, again stirring often until it is fully dried.
Once the granola is dried, you can crumble it into containers for storage. You can serve the granola with raw milk, coconut milk or with whole yogurt. The texture is slightly crispy, but not too hard for toddlers to manage the chewing, though you can crumble the granola into smaller pieces
for them if you wish. When my toddler is teething, I let the granola sit in the milk or yogurt for a bit to soak the liquid and get softer, and that works well too.

Notes

Excerpted from Nourished Beginnings Baby Food, © by Renee Kohley. Reprinted with permission from Page Street Publishing.

Easy Breakfasts for Happy Bellies

Most mornings, I like to start off with a light drink like this Super Green Morning Tonic or Butter Tea, but a solid breakfast is a great way to go, especially for small children. You can find all our breakfast recipes here.

Sprouted Quinoa Porridge is delightful, delicate and is served with a cardamom-spiced blackberry sauce.

Coco-Nutty Granola is easy to make in batches and you can store it in a jar for an easy breakfast you can grab in a moment’s notice.

Fresh Herb Frittata can be a nice lunch in addition to a breakfast, and it’s fantastic when you make it with spring’s very first eggs and fresh herbs.

Baked Eggs with Smoked Salmon is one of our favorites, and it only takes about five minutes of prep work before you toss them into the oven and go about your business.