Gluten Free Sweet Potato Pie

I got this recipe from a lovely lady who has been like a mother to me pretty much since I've started my life here in Georgia.  As much as she is a great person, she is also a great cook.  I love her sweet potato pie, but as my tinkering nerves like to join in the fun every time I make something, I've done it in a slightly different way, so that my funny brother-in-law can enjoy some pie too.  Here is how I made it.

The pie crust looks like this when it's ready.

For the gluten free pie shell:
1 scant cup uncooked rolled oats
3 tbsp brown sugar
2/3 cup walnuts/pecans, minced
1/3 cup butter (5 tbsp & 1 tsp), melted

I made it for our family Christmas gathering and I would like everyone get to eat some dessert, including my brother-in-law D, who is gluten intolerant, to be able to enjoy some sweet too.  So I tried out this pie crust recipe I found online and it turned out pretty well.  I saved the aluminum pie pan for Publix brand pie crust to use it as aide for this.

Preheat oven to 350F.  Spread the rolled oats in a large shallow pan and bake for 10 minutes to toast.  Toss with sugar, nuts and melted butter.  Press over bottom and up sides of the 9" pie pan. Refrigerate while preparing the filling. Oh, to mince the nuts, I use the Pampered Chef food chopper to do the job.

I had a little leftover crust material, so I put it in a small ramekin.

This pie crust is not as messy to make as a regular gluten free pie crust made out of flour, as I made it last year.  It has a different texture as one would expect, but I can dig it.

For the filling:

1 big sweet potato, well done (about 1 & 1/2 cup or a little less when mashed up)
1/2 stick butter
1/2 cup & 2 tbsp sugar
Sprinkle of salt
1/4 evaporated milk *
1&1/2 eggs *
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

* I made my own version of the evaporated milk with original unsweetened almond milk by Blue Diamond, since brother-in-law also can't have dairy (butter in cooking is ok).  Use 3 to 1 ratio, cook 3/4 cup of almond milk down to 1/4 cup as needed for the recipe.  Remember to constantly stir while cooking the milk down.

* The recipe I got was for 2 pies and it calls for 3 eggs, that's why it seems odd to have 1 & 1/2 eggs there.  I just used 2 eggs myself.

Wrap the sweet potato in paper towel and cook it in microwave until it's tender all throughout, about 7 to 8 minutes, depending the size of the sweet potato.  Scrape the meat off the skin and mash it in a big bowl.  Add butter, sugar and salt, mix well.  Mix the eggs and vanilla extract in a separate bowl well, then add the mixture to the potato bowl.  Slowly add milk the last and mix all into a pudding like consistency.  It should be thinner than mashed potatoes.  Pour it into unbaked pie shell.  Place in 300 F oven and bake approximately 1 hour.  The pie should be lightly brown and set.  Luckily, I had enough filling to fill up the small pie too.  So, voila, there is one big and one small.

Well, the whole pie turned out to be very delicious.  And everyone enjoyed the pie, including my brother-in-law, who misses eating pies!

Apple Sauce Pumpkin Pie

My family requested the pumpkin pie as their choice of dessert for some reason. Although it's no where near Thanksgiving or Christmas, it actually sounded good to me too, so I made my version of pumpkin pie. The original recipe was from Paula Deen's show, it was called apple butter pumpkin pie. It might very well have been the only dish featured in her show that is not super fattening and rich. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed her show. I like this recipe because of its simplicity and ease of making it. In the beginning, I made the pie just as the recipe instructed and it always turned out very good. After the kids came along, my husband and I became more conscientious than ever of the ingredients in the food that we ate daily. From reading the label on the jar of the apple butter, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was one of the ingredients. I couldn't find any apple butter that didn't include HFCS. Hence, apple butter was shunned from our house.

I started wondering if I could substitute it with apple sauce. Apple sauce usually is not as sweet as apple butter, but who to say we can't tweak the recipe and make it just as tasty. With that thought in mind, I made one to try it out and was pleasantly surprised. Tweaking was not really necessary. It did taste less smooth than using apple butter, well, as we all know, apple sauce has a natural grainy texture, but when it was baked in the pie, the graininess was barely noticeable. The apple sauce didn't take away the sweetness of the pie. It was still yummy. And since apple sauce and apple butter were both made from apples, the pie still has the same taste. From then on, I've used apple sauce to make the pie. So here is the recipe, you may use apple butter as it was originally intended.

1 cup apple sauce
1 cup fresh or canned pumpkin
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (note: packed!)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
3 eggs, slightly beaten
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
Sweetened whipped cream, for garnish (optional)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Combine apple sauce, pumpkin, sugar, salt and spices in a bowl. Stir in eggs. Gradually add milk and mix well. Pour into pie shell. Wrap the crust with foil. Bake for about 40 minutes or until set. I always have to stick a toothpick in the middle to test for sure.

On a side note, I always find it impossible to fit all the filling into a 9-inch pie shell. I either end up put the rest of it into small tart shells (like the ones you make fruit tarts with) to make mini-pies (yum!), or use less amount of the ingredients. In addition, in case you can't digest cow's milk (I think that's what evaporated milk is made from?), you can make your own evaporated milk with whichever kind that suits your fancy. At a 3:1 ratio, after a rapid boil, cook the milk down to the right ratio with constant stirring. Let chill in the fridge before usage.

One more thing, the 9-inch pie shell I use is the Publix store brand. Out of the regular frozen isle, this is the only brand of pie shell that doesn't contain hydrogenated oil in its ingredient listing (hopefully it's telling the truth). I didn't go search high and low to see if there is another kind somewhere else.

A tiny bit of the pie came off when I was taking the foil off the crust.