HI Your Fit Day Friends!
I’d been pondering a while on what would be the best low carb pie crust for my first pumpkin pie – while also being suitable for Ultra Low Carb meals, including the Carbnite Solution Diet Plan and Carb Backloading program.
Since giving up grains about 15 years ago, my Mom’s sweet, light and flaky, cinnamon-y pastry flour pie crust was no longer an option. I remember helping her in the kitchen, learning how to roll out the dough and laying the dough dipped pin over the pie plate. But the best part of pie making for me was collecting the falling waves of cut and crimped dough into my powdery hands, dousing them with cinnamon and sugar, and baking them until tender and flaky into my ‘pie crisp cookies’. They were little drops of buttery flakes that melted on my tongue like snowflakes. But my tummy, digestion and skin are so much better for giving up gluten and grains ( I do eat rice on my Carbnite!).
So my quest was to make a crust that was as alluring as a traditional one, which would also pleasing to the Paleo pallete!
To stay gluten free and low carb, coconut flour was certainly option. But I decided I wanted to make this crust with nuts only. To bind it together I would need a fat. Yum yum, fat!
My options were butter, lard, coconut oil…and maybe some of DebbyK’s coconut butter. Well, since I don’t eat dairy butter was not really an option for this crust (but don’t let me stop your grass fed butter dipping addictions!).
And straight lard in a nut crust just didn’t seem appealing to me with pumpkin pie.
I thought coconut butter, since it’s so thick, might seize up and make the nuts harder to spread, which would result in using a lot more coconut butter – quite possibly my entire jar. And truth be told I’d rather eat DebbyK’s Coconut Butter straight out of the jar than dump most of the jar into my pie crust. I confess, I’m an addict. Although, I do intend to try using the coconut butter in my next pie crust, so stay tuned!
Since this was my first pie crust I hopped to the web to get some inspirations and see what others, who are gluten free and primarily primal, had cooked up. Although the tart crust from Elenas Pantry was inspiring and looked tasty, I decided to exclude the egg, make it a nut medley, and throw in all the nuts I had in my fridge instead of using only almond flour.
The first crust I ended up with (without cinnamon because I forgot to add it in-oops!) sent wafts of sweet nuttiness through my small apartment. It was so hard not to eat it up right then. But I was thinking of you, so I didn’t. Which was the right thing to do, because if I had eaten that crust/cookie I’d be stuck without a crust for my Perfect Paleo Pumpkin Pie, which I hope you are making right now for Thanksgiving. And when I added the cinnamon in a second testing the crust came out even better: sweet nuttiness! That’s the one you’ll find below.
Really I could eat this pie crust alone as a giant cookie it, tastes that yummy!
As a side: I got even more creative with another crust for my tartlettes which I made from the leftover pie batter, and I added in 1/2 tsp ginger as well. Feel free to add a 1/4 tsp to the recipe below if you wish, and maybe even 1/4Â tsp of nutmeg to marry the crust and pie together even more. If you do, let me know how it comes out.
Anyway, you’ll get to taste the tartlettes soon enough!
Here is my Low Carb Nutty Crust:
- 1 Cup walnuts
- ½ Cup almonds
- ½ Cup almond flour (blanched)
- ½ Cup hazelnut flour
- 2 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 Tsp cinnamon
- Optional:
- ½ tsp ginger
- ¼ tsp nutmeg
- In a blender or food processor ( I only have a blender) add all pie crust ingredients.
- Pulse until nuts start to get crumbly. Be careful as to not allow nuts to start forming a butter.
- Continue to pulse until mixture forms a crumbly meal and comes together when pinched. Make sure you don't grind too much, you don't want nut nut butter! Stop to scrape down sides as needed.
- Scrape out into mound in center of pie pan or dish
- Starting from middle work the pie crust out and up sides of pie tin. This part of pie making reminds me of hand building a bowl or plate out of clay! Allow for thicker crust up the sides. Bottom can be thinner.
- Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until it just starts to brown. Do not over bake!
- Remove and let completely cool before filling
- Pie crust can be made day ahead and stored in refrigerator
- To keep carb count low I slice my pies into 16ths.
- Feel free to make this 8 servings but account for your daily net carbs.
- Remember: If this crust is for a pie stay focused, think PIE, and Do Not eat this as a cookie!
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