This past New Years I decided to be a little untraditional and bake a completely gluten & sugar free dessert. Yes, you’re probably asking what’s the point, but my family has a few dietary restrictions. I did find an amazing cookbook completely dedicated to this! The Joy of Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Baking, by Peter Reinhart & Denene Wallace includes dozens of tasty recipes sans flour and sugar. Of course if you really want to keep your precious sugar, go ahead and substitute it back in :)
Almond-Coconut Piecrust
Ingredients- 1 cup (4oz/113g) almond flour – Found at Trader Joe’s
- 1 cup (4oz/113g) coconut flour – Found at Whole Foods
- 1/4 cup of Splenda or Stevia (there are many different versions of Stevia)
- 1/2 tsp of baking powder
- 1/4 cup of salted butter or margarine, melted
- 3 tbsp of milk (any kind you want, whole, non-fat, soy…)
- 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
Melt the butter in a small saucepan and set aside. Combine all your dry ingredients, flours, sweetener and baking powder in a large bowl with a whisk until mixed. Add the butter, milk and vanilla and stir with a large spoon. Now this is where I got a little confused. . .
I expected something more a like dough to form, but the mixture stayed very crumbly. I mildly panicked and added about a tablespoon more of milk, no change. So I proceeded with the recipe and all was fine.
Lightly spray your pie plate before adding the crust. Put the mixture in you pie plate, lightly mist the dough and just press, pat, mash, etc. until the dough is molded into the plate. Prick the crust’s bottom and sides with a fork to prevent bubbles during baking.
Crumble Topping
Ingredients- 3/4 cup almond flour
- 1/4 cup Splenda or Stevia
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 1/4 cup salted butter or margarine, melted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Put all the ingredients in a small bowl and stir with a large spoon or spatula. The mixture should be crumbly and fairly dry. If it’s lumpy and moist instead place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, until hardened and will crumble.
Blackberry Filling
Ingredients- 2 egg whites (2.5oz/71g)
- 1/2 cup of Splenda or Stevia
- 4 cups of fresh blackberries (canned is okay but must be completely drained)
- 1 teaspoon of liquid stevia (this depends completely on the sweetness of the berries, I didn’t need any)
Go ahead and preheat the oven at this point to 350 degrees. Put the egg whites in the bowl of an electric mixer with whisk attachment. If you don’t have a mixer, place whites in a large bowl and use an electric hand mixer with whisk. Whisking by hand is possible but pretty tough!
Beat egg whites on medium-high speed for 3 to 5 minutes until stiff peaks form. Add the 1/2 cup of sweetener and beat until it dissolves and stiff peaks form again. Fold in the blackberries and liquid stevia with a rubber spatula. Pour filling into the pie crust.
Sprinkle the crumble on top of the filling. Cover the edges of the crust with aluminum foil to prevent burning. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. At that time, rotate the pie and bake for another 20 minutes. The pie is ready once it’s a delicious golden brown.
Wanna send this dessert over the edge? Ice cream of course! Traditional vanilla or maybe a coconut milk ice cream would be fantastic. I made a small batch of vanilla ice cream (real sugar) with a touch of ginger and cinnamon. So good!
Have any amazing gluten free or sugar free recipes that still taste really great? My favorite of course is French macarons (made with almond flour). Share in the comments below!
