Month: November 2017

mini pie crusts

Mini Pie Crusts – Dairy Free, Gluten Free, Vegan

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These tart shells are so cute and so full of possibilities! They can be filled with just about anything, and on their own they sort of taste like fortune cookies or waffle cones, but not quite as sweet. I snacked on a bunch of them while I was testing this recipe.

If you’re making mini-tarts for a party or celebration, I would the make a couple different pie fillings ahead of time, and then bake up a bunch of these tart shells the day I want to serve them. They have a crisper texture than normal pie shells, and I would fill them right before serving, as if the wet filling is in them too long then the bottoms of the tart shells can soften a bit and lose their crunch.

You can also set out bowls with a few different pie filling options like apple, pumpkin, pecan, or even a chocolate peppermint filling and people can top the tart shells with their filling of choice.

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I used a normal sized muffin tin (not a mini muffin tin). If you have to make them ahead of time, store them in an airtight container so that they retain most of their crunchiness.

Mini Pie Crusts

Makes 12 Tart shells.

Ingredients

6-8 tbsp. water

1 level tsp. psyllium husk powder*

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. olive oil

3 tbsp. maple syrup

1 cup of oat flour + 2 tbsp.**

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375.

2. Grease and flour the muffin tin with olive oil and oat flour.

3. Stir together 6 tbsp of water with the psyllium husk powder. It will gel up quickly, and try to smush out as many lumps as you can. Let it sit for 5 minutes, and then stir in the vanilla, olive oil and maple syrup until well combined. Add in the oat flour and knead until a smooth dough forms.

If the dough is too sticky, let it sit for a minute. If the dough is still sticky, add a little oat flour and knead it through.

If the dough is too dry, add 1 tbsp. or water and knead it through. The dough should have the consistency of a soft sugar cookie dough and shouldn’t crack or break apart at all when you press on it.

4. Cut the top and sides off of a gallon size Ziploc back so that you have a large rectangle of plastic when you unfold it. Dip a paper towel in a little bit of olive oil and oil the inside of the plastic.

5. Divide the dough into 4 equal portions. Take one portion of the dough and roll it out between the two layers or oiled plastic until it’s just slightly thinner than 1/8 of an inch thick. Use a 3.5 inch wide round cookie cutter (I used the band off the top of wide mouth mason jar for this), to cut rounds out of the dough.

Peel the scrap dough away from the rounds. Peel the rounds away from the plastic and press them gently into the muffin pan. Repeat until you have 12 little tart shells ready to bake.

6. Prick the bottom of each tart shell with a fork 2-3 times, and bake the tart shells for 20-25 minutes until golden brown around the edges. Let them cool in the pan, then use a butter knife to pop them out of the muffin tin.

Fill with your favorite pie filling, add a dollop of cashew whipped cream if desired, and serve immediately.

Notes – *Psyllium husk powder gels like nothing else, and there’s no great substitute for it. I found mine in the bulk spice section of the local Fred Meyer, but Whole Foods, Trader Joes have been known to carry it as well. If it’s not in the natural foods, or bulk spice section, check the dietary supplement/ digestive health (where the Metamucil is) section of the store or pharmacy as it’s sometimes sold there as well.

** I grind oats into oat flour using a blender. Don’t grind the oats in a food processor because the flour won’t be fine enough.

Any extra oat flour I don’t use in the recipe goes into an airtight container and I use it for another recipe.

 

 

 

muffin pan

The Best Way To Flour a Pan or Baking Dish, or an Ode to the Snap Mesh Tea Strainer

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I don’t use non-stick cookware or non-stick sprays, and learning to bake without those things can seem like a challenge.

But I’m here to tell you that it’s actually pretty easy! I use a stainless steel muffin pan and baking sheet, glass bakeware, or use a silpat. This is how I grease and flour my bakeware so that I can get my baked goods in an out of the pans easily.

I used to find that I would waste at least a few tablespoons of extra oat flour when I needed to grease and flour a baking dish. Recently, I figured out that my snap mesh tea strainer was the perfect thing to dust oat flour over any baking dish.

Having a handle attached to what is essentially a very tiny flour sifter makes adding fairy light coatings of oat flour over baking dishes a breeze. You just flick your wrist a few times and like magic, your muffin pan is perfectly floured and you are ready to fill it with lovely muffin or cupcake batter.

And pretty soon the whole kitchen smells like heaven, there are freshly baked muffins and instantly it’s a fantastic day!

You can find snap mesh tea strainers online for about $5. I think that I got mine about 5 years ago from Whole Foods and it’s still going strong. They are pretty easy to care for, just make sure to hand wash and don’t let wet tea stay in them overnight to avoid rusting. I always snap them onto the lip of a jar or mug so that the two metal halves of the tea strainer get a chance to properly dry out.aa

Directions

1. To grease and oil a baking dish, I dip a corner of a folded paper towel into either some olive oil or a neutral flavored oil like avocado oil, and then rub the oiled bit of the paper towel over the surface of the baking dish.

2. Add some oat flour to one of the half spheres and close the tea strainer. Shake strainer to dust the oat flour over the surface of the oiled baking dish. If no more oat flour is coming out, then the little bits of oat flour left in the strainer are probably too large to make it through the fine mesh. Open the strainer, and pour out these larger bits of oat flour, and add more new oat flour to the tea strainer and resume dusting.

I also use this to whisk matcha tea. I don’t have a traditional bamboo matcha tea whisk, but I just put some powdered matcha tea into this tea strainer and then whisk it into some hot water and it works great. I don’t whisk until the tea is frothy, just until the tea is smooth and all of the matcha powder has worked its way through the fine mesh of the tea strainer.

This would make a great stocking stuffer for anyone who loves to bake. You’ll probably have to spend a minute explaining how amazing it is at dusting oat flour, or cocoa powder (if you’re making brownies) over bakeware, but once they try it, they’ll probably wonder how they ever greased and floured anything without it.