SRC: The Gingered Whisk’s Grilled Apple Pie

For this month’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. I think it’s funny because she had my blog for May’s roundup and made these raw Cranberry Mango Nut Bars. She has tons of delicious recipes, such as Penne with Broccoli Rabe, Bacon and Chickpeas and Jaeger Schnitzel and Spaetzle. When I was deciding what to make, it was quite hot and I didn’t feel like using my stove/oven, so I looked at Jenni’s nifty recipe box for grilled recipes and came up with this grilled apple pie.

To any doubters, don’t let the idea of a grilled apple pie turn you off of this – basically what you do is bake the pie in a cast iron pan in your BBQ. I obviously made my pie gluten free – I tried to roll out the pie instead of piecing it together – and used a bit less sugar. Even with my changes and the novel baking method, I thought it turned out very well and it was yummy! Mr. Bean definitely agreed.

Please check out the rest of everyone else’s recipes for June’s SRC by clicking the link below!

SRC: One Lovely Life’s Fall Fruit Pie

Can’t decide whether you want pie or crisp? How about make both! For November’s Secret Recipe Club, I made One Lovely Life’s Fall Fruit Pie. Emily had TONS of beautiful and delicious looking recipes – it was so hard for me to choose just one to make!

Obviously I changed things a bit as I can’t eat gluten. I made an almond flour crust (that I apparently cooked too much – user error on my part!) and used a mixture of almond and brown rice flour for the topping and brown rice flour in the pie itself. I also used less sugar as my apples and pears were quite sweet and no cinnamon so that my mom could eat it.

I quite enjoyed this pie – the topping makes it especially fabulous! I thinking I would love to make it again but with an actually nice pie crust that isn’t overcooked. I really like how this pie had both apples and pears – it’s like the best of both worlds!

As per Ground Cherry’s request, here is the recipe I used for the topping:

1/3 c. cold Earth Balance Soy Free Buttery Spread
1/3 – 1/2 c. sucanat, ground into a fine powder
1/2 c. GF oatmeal
1/4 c. each of almond flour and brown rice flour
1/4 c. chopped almonds
1/4 tsp. salt

If you have some time, do go over and check out some of Emily’s recipes!

Also shared at: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays and Gluten-Free Wednesdays.

Vegan Gluten Free Rhubarb Apple Galette

Ever heard of a galette before? I hadn’t – I guess that isn’t terribly surprising as french food has never been very prominent in my family – that is until a week or so ago my sister wrote about her apple galette making experience. Since I had some pie dough left over from my previous pie making and a ton of rhubarb from a friend to use up (unfortunately the rhubarb in the pot on my front step isn’t growing enough to make enough for baking), I wanted a way to use them up that wasn’t quite your traditional pie.  I was also feeling lazy and didn’t want to make more dough so that I could make the usual double crusted rhubarb pie – besides, I’ve already made one like that before!

I was actually fairly surprised with how easy the galette is put together because there is no transferring the dough into the pie pan and having to piece it back together. I do recommend using a sturdier pie dough that can stand rolling and bending as both are key parts of making the galette.

I have mentioned a while ago how I had been cutting back the amount of sugar that I eat as I’ve come to realize that I’m not immune to the vicious cycle of the more sugar I eat, the more I crave it. The last few weeks I haven’t been very good and watching this and now I’m dealing with the consequences – I’ve been struggling more emotionally and gained a bit of weight because of all the less great food I have been eating. Thus, I have renewed my desire to reduce the amount of sugar I eat. Understandably, this poses a bit of a problem when using rhubarb as it is incredibly sour and requires some kind of sweetener. (I will occasionally eat cranberries straight, which causes Mr. Bean to laugh at all the faces I make, but I draw the line at eating unsweetened rhubarb.) I know I could use some sugar substitute, but I happily don’t own any, so I needed to come up with a different solution. The answer? I decided to add an apple to help add sweetness and just used a bare minimum of agave nectar to counteract the tang from the rhubarb. It worked quite well, but if you want it to be sweeter, don’t hesitate to add more agave nectar.

Vegan Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Rhubarb Apple Galette

1 GF pie crust dough (I used the leftover Namaste GF Pie Crust dough from my previous pie adventures)
3 c. rhubarb, cut into 1 cm (1/2″) pieces
1 sweet apple (I used gala), peeled, cored and cut into 1/2″ pieces
3 tbsp. tapioca starch
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cardamom
3 tbsp. agave nectar (more if desired)

1. Roll out the pie dough into a circle until the crust is slightly more than 1/4″ thick between a piece of plastic wrap (top) and parchment paper (bottom). Remove the plastic wrap and press the edges of the disk to smooth them out and make it more circular.
2. In a medium sized bowl, mix together the rhubarb, apple, tapioca starch, cinnamon and cardamom until rhubarb and apple are evenly coated.
3. Drizzle on the agave nectar and toss until evenly coated.
4. Pile the rhubarb mixture onto the middle of the pie dough, leaving a 2″ border.
5. Using the parchment paper, fold the edges of the dough over the filling mixture. Use your fingers to press the dough together to keep it folded.
6. Transfer parchment paper onto a cookie sheet and bake in preheated oven at 350F for 25 minutes.
7. Rotate the pan and cook for another 20 minutes or until filling is bubbly and pie crust is golden brown. Note: I did add about 1 tbsp. of water to the the filling when I rotated it.
8. Remove from oven and let cool before serving.
9. Enjoy!

Do you like rhubarb?

Shared at: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Hearth and Soul Hop 53 and Gluten Free Wednesdays.

Namaste Baking Mixes Review and Giveaway

A while ago I was approached by Namaste Foods to review some of their gluten (plus dairy, soy, nut, corn & potato) free baking mixes. Since I had actually seen their products at one of the health food stores around here and how they are so allergy friendly, I was happy to accept! In addition, I also realize that sometimes there just isn’t time to make something from scratch, so having advice on what mixes to get is helpful!

I was encouraged to choose one sweet and one savoury mix: I chose their Pizza Crust mix and the Biscuits, Pie Crusts and More! mix.

Lately I’ve been trying to make my own pizza crusts as I don’t like paying huge amounts of money for two small crusts and I wanted vegan crusts, but with little success. The yeast crusts take too long and taste too yeasty and the non-yeast ones I’ve tried have had separation anxiety with my non-stick pan and wouldn’t stay together. So, when the opportunity to try Namaste’s pizza crust, I was quite excited. Fortunately it did not disappoint.

The mix was very easy to make – all I had to do was add water and oil, mix, spread out on a pan and bake. (Much easier than trying to wrestle to flatten pizza dough, wait for it to rise, and to struggle to cut it only to have the pizza crust taste too yeasty!) As a precautionary measure, I decided to make this crust on parchment paper so that it wouldn’t experience similar separation issues (causing me issues!) as past attempts.

The crust itself was very tasty and the added herbs were a nice touch. It cut fairly well and stayed together very well, even when it was cold! I wished that it would have risen slightly more, but the crust made a very good thin crust. I’m glad that it turned out as the mix makes two crusts! (In case you’re interested, this is what I put on the pizza: spread with tomato paste, sprinkle with italian seasonings and fresh parsley, cover with ham, spinach, thuringer sausage, peppers, onions, mushrooms, asparagus, pineapple and mozzarella cheese (optional).)

Since I’m still not eating eggs, I wanted to choose a mix that didn’t necessarily need them. Once I saw that they had a pie crust mix, I knew I wanted to try it as I believe that one of the hardest tests for gluten free baking is to make a pie crust that doesn’t fall apart immediately or doesn’t need a chain saw to cut.

Fortunately, I was very impressed with Namaste’s pie crust mix – it cut easily and didn’t crumble. The original recipe called to press the crust into the pan, but since Mr. Bean wanted a saskatoon berry pie for his birthday, I wanted to roll it out so I could have the traditional two-crust berry pie. After many frustrating attempts, I’ve found the best way to roll out pie crust is between two pieces of plastic wrap. As you can see, it rolled out very well as there were essentially no cracks in the top crust – almost unheard of in my experience with gluten free pie crusts!

I didn’t roll it out as thinly as I could have as by the end I had to exert a fair amount of pressure, hence the very large edges. Even so, I made double the recipe the mix gave me so I could have two crusts, but it made enough for about 3 pie crusts. The crust itself had a good texture – not quite as flaky as its gluten and dairy filled counterpart, but I can’t complain because it held its form very well. It was quite tasty, too – usually the pastry part of pies is my least favourite, but I found myself secretly enjoying breaking off the edges and eating it plain. Mr. Bean was also very impressed with this pie and he is looking forward to the pie I am going to make with the remaining dough!

The filling was adapted from the frozen berry pie filling from the Joy of Cooking. I didn’t quite add enough tapioca starch so the juices didn’t thicken up as much as I would have liked. It was very tasty regardless.

Saskatoon Berry Pie Filling

5 c. frozen saskatoon berries
1/2 c. sugar
4 tbsp. of tapioca starch
1 pinch salt
2 tbsp. grapeseed oil or melted butter (if desired)

1. Preheat oven to 450F.
2. Defrost berries only so that they all separate easily. Place berries in a large bowl.
3. Add the sugar, tapioca starch and salt. Stir until berries are covered.
4. Pour into the pie crust and cover with the top crust. Pinch edges of the crust together in any desired manner.
5. Bake in the hot oven for 10 minutes.
6. Turn the heat down to 350F and bake for 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
7. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before cutting.
8. Enjoy!

Now for the giveaway!

What you will win:

Namaste Giveaway Tote
3 Namaste Foods Products
Namaste Grocery tote
Copy of our Simple Pleasures Cookbook
Copy of Living Without Magazine
Assorted recipe cards

How to win:

• Leave a comment below

For additional entries, you can:

• Subscribe to my blog/rss feed and leave a comment to let me know (or if you already do, just leave a comment saying that!)
• Share this giveaway on your blog, facebook or twitter (leave a separate comment for each)

This giveaway is now closed.

This giveaway is only open to the US and Canada! Sorry to my international readers! A winner will be drawn using random.org on June 14th.

Thanks for participating and good luck!

*I received both the pizza crust and biscuits, pie crusts and more mixes as well as a grocery tote and recipe cards in exchange for this review.*

Happy Pi Day!

I realized at 4pm today that it was pi day today and that I hadn’t made any pie. Mr. Bean has always been on my case to make a banana cream pie, but I’ve always refused as all I could think about what the banana petroleum products “cream” pie that they use to pie people at engineering school. Not exactly the best example of a good tasting pie.

In Cybele Pascal’s Allergen-Free Baker’s Handbook, there is a recipe for gluten, dairy, egg and soy free banana cream pie, so I thought that I might as well give it a go. I wanted to try a pie crust that didn’t require rolling and didn’t send the blood sugar soaring, so I thought I would try Elana’s Coconut Pie Crust from her Almond Flour Cookbook. Ironically, I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed for either recipe despite a trip to the grocery store, so I improvised and changed things up a bit. This may not be the absolute healthiest banana cream pie you’ve had, but it’s pretty darn close in my opinion.

The custard/cream is tasty but the texture is a bit different. I think it’s because I used tapioca starch instead of cornstarch. Use cornstarch! I’ve used cornstarch in pumpkin pies before and it worked well.

Banana Coconut Cream Pie

Coconut Almond Pie Crust

3/4 c. almond flour
1/4 c. shredded coconut, toasted
1/2 c. coconut flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 c. coconut oil, melted over low heat
1 tbsp. agave nectar
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Mix together flours, coconut, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. Whisk together coconut oil, agave nectar and vanilla extract.
4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until combined.
5. Press into a 9″ pie pan.
6. Bake in oven for 7 – 10 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Let it cool completely on a cooling rack before filling.

Banana Coconut “Cream” Pie Filling

21 oz. coconut milk (about 1 1/3 cans – make sure you shake before you measure!)
1/4 c. + 3 tbsp. agave nectar, divided
1/4 c. + 2 tsp. corn starch (I used tapioca starch and it didn’t work as well as I would have hoped.)
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg replacer (1 1/2 tsp. egg replacer whisked in 2 tbsp. rice milk until frothy and no lumps remain)
3 – 4 ripe bananas, sliced thinly
Yellow food colouring (optional)

1. Measure out 1/3 c. coconut milk and set aside. Heat the rest of the coconut milk with the 1/4 c. agave nectar in a saucepan over medium heat until bubble form on the sides of the pot. Remove from the heat.
2. Whisk together set aside coconut milk, 3 tbsp. agave nectar, cornstarch, salt, vanilla and egg replacer. Pour into coconut milk mixture and stir to combine.
3. Heat the mixture on medium heat until it starts to simmer, stirring constantly. Let it simmer for about 4 minutes or until it is thickened.
4. Spread a small amount of the custard on the bottom of the pie crust. Lay one layer of bananas down.
5. Pour about half the remaining custard over the bananas and spread evenly over bananas. Lay another layer of bananas down.
6. Pour the remaining custard over the bananas and smooth the top.
7. Let the pie cool until room temperature and then refrigerate until ready to serve. Make sure it’s cold before you cut so that doesn’t flomp like mine did!
8. Enjoy!

What’s your favourite kind of pie?

Linked up to: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Hearth and Soul Hop-Volume 39, Gluten Free Wednesdays and Seasonal Sundays.