easter treats part I: banana ice cream & quinoa parfait

With Easter weekend around the corner, its usually a time where we indulge in a lot of chocolate and sugary snacks. Not only is our fruity quinoa parfait is a fun reinvention of the standard granola parfait, but topped with the one-ingredient banana ice cream, you can have this as a guilt-free dessert and feel great about it!

With the layers of fruit, fat-free yogurt, and quinoa, you can have this for breakfast, lunch, or dessert, and still have a balanced and healthy meal. You can make substitutions to our recipe, depending on your favourite fruits or flavour of yogurt. You can even use Greek yogurt for some added protein.

Although you can grab a parfait from places like Starbucks and Tim Hortons, one from Starbucks has about 100 more calories, 2 times the sugar, and 3 times the sodium!

Banana ice cream
Optional, but totally recommended. The more ripe and browned your bananas are, the sweeter the ice cream will be. Chop one banana into pieces and freeze for 1-2 hours. Blend until smooth and creamy.

Quinoa parfait ingredients:
• 1/4 cooked quinoa
• 8oz no sugar added, fat free vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 cup of your favourite fruit – raspberries, blueberries, chopped bananas, strawberries, and kiwi work really well

Instructions:
1. Layer half of the cooked quinoa, followed by fruit, then yogurt.
2. Repeat your layers until you’re finished with the ingredients.
3. Enjoy right away topped with banana ice cream, or save it for later in a sealed tupperware or jar.

Number of servings: 1
Nutritional information: With the banana ice cream 210 calories, 1g fat, 45g carbs, 6.5g protein; Without the ice cream 120 calories, 1g fat, 22g carbs, 5.5g protein