[KimS]

As you can see, I'm trying to find some of my old standby recipes from last winter...

[KimS]

Okay, so technically this is not a pie shell... but its a very good crumble topping and would probably make a good granola replacement crust.

**************************

General Crumble You can put this topping on any pie filling and it's quite nice. Very fast, very easy. Can be made up in about 5 minutes.

I'm thinking this might also work as a nice granola recipe... maybe just add some raisins if a person like them too.

It's a nice breakfast, reheated or cold, the next morning.

I think the brown rice flour and buckwheat flour could be interchanged with any gf mix of flours you want. But this is how I made my Buckwheat crumble on the weekend and it was tasty enough that my daughter just wanted the crumble but not the rhubarb filling.

However, I never made a rhubarb filling before, so I think I need to sweeten it some more than I did. I've also since read that rhubarb is nicer when mixed with other fruits, rather than being alone in a pie or crumble.

1/2 cup arrowroot (I would think tapioca would be fine here though, as well)
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup walnuts (chopped or ground)
1/4 cup oil
4 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Heat oil and honey and mix well. Stir everything else in willy nilly. Remember, it's a crumble mix so it will be... crumbly. Now you're done.

I like to mix some of it in with the fruit mix on the bottom and then put the majority of it on top. To each their own though.
__________________
KimS - who only gets to participate occassionally with two hands these days
01/02/2002 Small Amounts of Gluten Cause Relapse in Children (see: docguide.com)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/q...=pubmed_docsum

12/20/2002 The symptomatic response to a gf diet with borderline enteropathy (see: docguide.com)

[diamondheart]

It really is flakey! Gluten free, dairy free option, and corn free.

For 1 crust. Double for two.
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup sweet rice flour; can use regular rice flour; best to use 1/8 cup rice flour and 1/8 cup potato starch
1/4 tapioca starch
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup cold palm oil shortening (Spectrum vegetable shortening brand)
3 Tbsp cold ghee (Technically, this does not have any of the milk solids, so it's dairy free. If you are sensitive to it, just substitute with vegetable shortening)
1 egg
¼ tsp xanthum gum
1 Tbsp lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, or water (optional)
1 1/2 tsp date sugar for sweet pies
1/8 to 1/4 tsp cinnamon for sweet pies

The easy way to make this is to put everything in a food processor (pastry blade optional; I didn't see that it helped) and mix until you get a ball of dough. First, put in all the dry ingredients and pulse until mixed. Then add the vegetable shortening and ghee and process until you get a coarse meal. Then, add the egg and lemon juice. You can finish getting all the dough in a ball by hand.

Directions to mix by hand: Mix the flours, tapioca, sugar, and salt together. Cut the shortening and ghee into chunks, and using your fingertips, work them into the dry ingredients to form a coarse meal. Make a well. Break the egg into the well. Use a fork to stir from the center, working the flour into the egg to form a soft dough.

The easy way to put this in the pie pan is to press it in. Grease your pie pan first by either lightly spraying oil in it or using the vegetable shortening or ghee. Make a disk out of the dough, and press it in place with your fingers.

If you want to roll it out, make disk out of the dough and chill in the refrigerator before you do so. Roll out between two sheets of wax paper. After you roll it out, remove one of the sheets of wax paper, put your greased pie pan upside down on the crust, then flip everything over. Remove the second piece of wax paper and gently press the crust into the pan. If it cracks anywhere, you can easily fix it by pressing the broken ends together. Rolling out is best if you are making two crust pies, like apple pie.

For single pie crusts, pre-cook at 400 degrees for 10 minutes. When baking with the filling, cover the fluted edges with foil. (take a square of foil, fold in quarters, cut out the middle, then unfold)

For double crusts, do not pre-cook. Cover the fluted edges with foil and remove the foil during the last 10 minutes of baking. Also, don’t cook your pie higher than 350 degrees or the pie crust will fry and crumble (at least that was my experience).

Variations: If you can have dairy or soy, use 1/3 cup of cream cheese (for dairy free, used Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese) instead of the egg. Also, substitute 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of butter (1 stick) for the vegetable shortening and ghee (for dairy free with soy, use 1/2 cup Earth Balance buttery spread).

Credits:
1. Debbie Sarfati of Whole Nourishment. I took her baking class and modified her recipe to make it soy free.
2. Rebecca Reilly's Gluten-Free Baking. I didn't like her GF flour mix, as I thought it had too much brown rice flour, so I used Debbie's mix. I did get some ideas of stuff to add in the crust that Debbie didn't have and used some of Rebecca's methodology.

Claire

[KimS]

I've been using coconut oil instead of butter in my pie crusts and am making the best pie crusts of my life (hooray!)... even better than I ever could when we were gf.

Coconut oil seems more forgiving than butter which melts very fast in your fingers when you crumble it into the flour.