Quinoa pudding paletas with plums

Ingredients

The plums:

• 3
  
  plums, semi-ripe (still a bit tart)
  
• 1
  
  tablespoon sugar
  

The quinoa pudding, and assembly of paletas:

• 1
  
  cup quinoa
  
• 1 1/2
  
  cups water, divided
  
• 1
  
  14 oz. can evaporated milk
  
• 3
  
  tablespoons sugar, or to taste
  
• 1
  
  cinnamon stick
  
• 1/4
  
  cup heavy cream
  
• 
  
  the cooked and cooled plums, from above
  

Directions

The plums:

1. Start by peeling, pitting, and dicing the plums. You should end up with ~1.5 cups or so of chopped plum-material. Stir in the sugar and let it all macerate for about 15 minutes.
2. Once it’s good and macerated, throw it the plums a saucepan and cook it down until the plum chunks cease to be distinguishable and all is gooshy and delicious. Sitr frequently, especially as it begins to cook down, to keep the bottom from burning. If it starts to get very thick before the plum chunks break down, add a splash or two of water to thin it out again and keep cooking. You should end up with about 1 cup of plum goo. Remove from heat and chill until you’re ready to make your paletas.

The quinoa pudding, and assembly of paletas:

1. Bring the quinoa and 1 cup of the water to a boil in a small pot. Boil gently, uncovered, for 4 minutes without stirring; then remove from the heat, cover, and let sit for at least 15 minutes. Go fold your laundry, or work on your lab report, or what have you-the quinoa has infinite patience. When you’re ready, add the other 1/2 cup of water, the sugar, the evaporated milk and the cinnamon stick, and bring it all back to a boil. Then, turn down the heat and simmer it uncovered for about 30 minutes, or until most of the liquid is absorbed or evaporated away. You’ll need to stir it pretty frequently to keep it from burning on the bottom. A skin may form on the surface; that’s alright, just stir it right back in. Finally, stir in the cream, continue heating for another minute or two, and then take the pot off the stove. Let it cool.
2. When the quinoa has cooled enough not to burn you, carefully extract the cinnamon stick with whatever utensil you please (in my kitchen, fingers may have been used for at least part of this process). If you taste the pudding now, it will taste very sweet, but fear not: when it’s frozen you won’t taste the sweet nearly as much. Anyway, to make the paletas: layer the pudding and the plum mixture into a popsicle mold, willy-nilly, any way you like. I found it surprisingly difficult to spoon stuff in neatly so I just went for broad stripes, but if you have mad paleta skills, you might try narrower bands, or swirls, or something. The number of paletas you make will depend on (a) your popsicle mold, and (b) your particular balance of plum to pudding. The ratio per paleta is very much to taste.
3. Put the filled mold in the freezer for a couple hours or overnight, until the paletas are frozen solid. To serve, run the mold under hot water until you can extract the paletas, and eat!