Cheesy Quinoa Cakes with Garlic & Lemon Aioli

My dad has been asking me to make a recipe with quinoa for months because there are so many benefits. You might be surprised to know that trying new things makes me a little nervous, especially things that I have never heard of before. When I found this recipe I was certain that even if quinoa wasn't that great itself, that the cheese and garlic would help.

I couldn't find plain quinoa at any of the stores I usually shop at (I know, I should have looked at a specialty store) so I used a pre-packaged garlic quinoa.

Ingredients:

Cheesy Quinoa Cakes
-2 cups cooked quinoa
-2/3 cup grated mozarella cheese
-3 tablespoons all purpose flour
-2 green onions, thinly sliced
-1 egg, lightly beaten
-2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
-2 ½ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
-salt to taste

Aioli
-½ cup light mayonnaise
-1 head of garlic, roasted
-1 lemon, zested and juiced
-¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
-salt and pepper to taste

Cook the qunioa.

Mix all ingredients together except for the oil, use this to cook the cakes in a skillet. I made mine on a griddle.

Make 8-10 cakes and cook for five minutes on each side. 

Little quinoa cakes.

Cooked cakes. 

Mix together all of the ingredients for the aioli together. 

Serve the aioli with the finished quinoa cakes. 

J. and I couldn't figure out what was off about this recipe, I think using garlic quinoa made a huge difference and not in a good way -- if you plan on making this you should use plain quinoa. Also, the garlic & lemon aioli was very lemony it would have been fine with just a tablespoon of lemon, but an entire lemon juiced plus zest was too much. I'll try to find another quinoa recipe to try, I won't give up yet.