Gluten-free, dairy-free pumpkin pie!

I finally took a photo of a gluten-free, dairy-free pumpkin pie this year! Two different times!

The crust was largely hazelnut and rice flour with all the spices of pumpkin pie. I used coconut oil and put a little vanilla in with the cold water, using this crust recipe (with mostly nut flour/meal). I baked the shell for 15-20 minutes before filling it with the pumpkin mix.

I used essentially the spices in the proportions on the can of pumpkin (there were no pie pumpkins available this week) with just a little extra of each spice. For one pie, most cans call for

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 nutmeg

The liquid filling for my one pie omitted the “3/4 cup granulated sugar.” It included:

• 2 pastured eggs from the farm
• about 1 1/2-2 cups of coconut milk (full fat, unsweetened, organic – see brand discussion below)
• a half cup of maple syrup
• a dollop of molasses
• about a teaspoon of vanilla

This is what I make for my kids and husband. For me, I omit sweeteners and add in a little applesauce and perhaps a bit more GF vanilla.

Before I went on the GAPS diet, I would put just a little arrrowroot in a tiny bit of water and mixed that with the coconut milk (and syrup) just to add a little stiffness. I don’t do that anymore.

Once, to home-cooked pumpkin, I included arrowroot and a few Tablespoons of rice flour in the mix, and the result was too solid, as you can see — more like a quiche instead of velvety.

The rest of the mainstream directions I followed, after baking my mostly-nut meal crusts for 15 min first:

Mix dry ingredients in a small bowl. Beat eggs in a larger bowl. Add in pumpkin and spices and mix well. Slowly mix in in coconut milk/maple syrup/vanilla mixture.

Bake in preheated 425° F oven for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350° F; bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted near center comes out clean.

In all cases, the pies were delicious. People who need more sweet can add ice cream. We used So Delicious Coconut Milk Ice Cream though I am not a fan of that brand’s coconut milk in a carton and always use the canned organic coconut milk that has no weird additives besides a little guar gum and water. And it tastes a lot better than the So Delicious cartons.

As for coconut milk brands, Thai Kitchen is a little more expensive where I live than Native Forest, so I usually go with NF. The Whole Foods Brand is cheapest but is often more watery and less flavorful. I found I couldn’t really tolerate the Tropical Traditions Coconut Cream Concentrate very well, and I didn’t like having to warm up and add water.

Most recently (revised March 2014), we’ve started using Natural Value coconut milk, because it has no guar gum or other stabilizers.