Among the many things I made for Thanksgiving this year was a humble pie. ;) Alright, so it wasn't exactly humble...I had to doctor it up a bit (as with most things I make these days!). Every year, I always make at least two pies. One is always pumpkin and the other is always apple. I play around with the toppings/fillings/flavors just to keep things interesting. I'm never into making the same thing twice, unless I absolutely have no choice. I enjoy pushing myself to be creative, especially while making desserts. Pie is such a staple during Thanksgiving. I've had the generic double crusted apple and cinnamon pie so many times. I honestly never liked it all that much. When I started to bake, I fell back in love with cooked apples. There are so many uses for them (ehem, stuffing!) while making both savory and sweet dishes. I particularly like to add them into fillings to balance out salty or bitter flavors from other vegetables and fruits. What I decided to do with this pie is no different... The crust I made was a little less than half of a doubled recipe that you can find here. Now, yes, normally I would make my own flour blend from scratch. However, sometimes life ruins thngs and I have to "cut corners". Bob's Red Mill saved my day with their pie crust dry mix. I just veganized it by using vegan butter. I've also used refined coconut oil in place of butter. It tastes great, but is a bit more difficult to work with as it gets warm very quickly. The only other amendment I made to Bob's pie crust recipe is that I used a splash of apple cider vinegar with the other wet ingredients. This makes the crust a bit flakier, I've found. Plus, cider vinegar is magical and I like to throw it in anything I possibly can! ^_^ As for the filling, I used a mixture of granny smith and fuji apples. I like the balance of sweet and sour that these two varieties of apples provide to a filling. They retain a bit of their bite after cooking as well, which is wonderful for texture. (There's nothing more disappointing than mushy apples! >_<) I decided to get a little crazy and add some thick date caramel to the pie filling. This idea turned out to be a good one for a couple reasons... 1. The caramel adds some fruity sweetness which helped the over all flavor of the pie since I did not use cane sugar in the filling. 2. The caramel helped to bind the pie filling together with the streusel topping. It also added a creamy texture that was quite unexpected! I never waste anything (if I can help it) while I cook. I had a sizable amount of leftover pie dough after rolling out 2 base crusts, so I cut it into my streusel topping! The topping isn't an actual recipe, per se. I just cut in my leftover pie dough with coconut sugar to taste (brown sugar will do too), leftover almond pulp (from making almond milk!), a pinch of salt, and a generous amount of cinnamon (to taste as well). I also had to add some AP gluten free flour to obtain the correct level of dryness. This is something that I just eyeballed. Once the mixture feels like slightly moistened sand, it's ready to use. Date Caramel Apple Pie with Streusel ToppingYield: 1-9" pie (8-10 servings) Sources: Date Caramel Recipe by The Detoxinista; Filling Recipe, adapted from Plant Powered Kitchen Ingredients
* See image above for an example of "pie pricking" =P ** See passage above for my streusel "recipe". If you don't have almond pulp or leftover pie dough, you can use this recipe from Veganomicon, which is my go-to recipe for a basic streusel. It's pretty fool-proof! Instructions Oven 350 F.
Date Caramel
Instructions
Happy Pie Making! <3 Comments are closed.
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I'm Jess!This is my very first food blog! I post revised conventional recipes of foods that I hold near and dear to my heart. My cooking here is all gluten-free and cruelty-free, but full of flavor and comfort. Archives
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