Wednesday, January 16, 2013

We Try It Wednesdays - Lime and Avocado Raw Pie - Paleo

It is that time again!!!

Today we decided to cook something we had never cooked before, and when I saw This Recipe on the guilty kitchen, we just had to try it - the green appealed to my artistic side heheh.
Now this is my first time cooking this pie, I was going to do a trial run first, but then threw caution to the wind and start cooking and photographing. I am cooking this solo as John is still sick, but he will take part in the eating lol.

Now because we havent tried this before, we will be reviewing it on taste, and tweaks, a mark out of a ten and a repeatability for the family...also budget, because in this economy if its not budget friendly its not going to get made very often.

Gather your ingrediants!
you are going to need a pie dish or quiche dish

you will also need the following ingredients for your crust - keep in mind this is a raw pie so there is no baking involved in this pie!

        Crust

  • 1 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut chips
  • 1/2 cup  almond meal
  • juice and zest of one lime
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1 cup medjool dates, pitted ( I couldn't find medjool in coles on the day I went shopping so I bought the softest most juicy looking dates I could find in the baking section)
  • 2 tsp natural vanilla extract
  • 1/4 coconut oil, melted  

I used a food processor for making this, but you can also use a heavy duty blender like the original recipe says.
These are the coconut chips I used in our crust
it took 2.5 bags of them to get the required amount for the recipe, they are $1.99 a bag.
this is what they look like out of the bag - they are really tasty!

get all you crust ingredients into your food processor and get them combined. I put mine on highspeed at first so that the dates would really get chopped up, next time I might even half my dates first before putting them into the processor just to give it a helping hand, and so that its looks more refined. Once its combined this is what you should have.
 I used a smaller pie dish than what the recipe called for, as I wanted a decent crust, the original one I had out was too big and I knew the crush would be spread thin. I tasted this part on its own, and it held its on on taste, the lime juice and zest really helps it. Get your crust into your pie dish, I used my hands to pat it out evenly.

 once you are happy with your crust, pop it into our freezer to set quickly while you work on the chocolate part.
you need
    Chocolate Layer
  • 3oz unsweetened chocolate
  • 2 tbsp coconut oil

    I found a coles brand of chocolate in the health food section that had no added sugar over 70% cocoa, I would have liked to use the paleo version that the Americans have access too, but this has enough in it to still be paleo.
    I melted mine down in the microwave but you can do it the old fashion way over hot water, but I need to work fast with this! so I took a short cut! The original recipe says you can put a teaspoon of maple syrup into the chocolate, but we opted out of this.
 Tip: get your crust out of the freezer so it isnt too cold! it was hard to spread the chocolate onto a cold cold crust...so next time I wont leave it in the freezer so long!

note - If you want this to be a dairy free pie, just skip the chocolate all together. 

pop into the fridge while you make your filling.
    For the Filling
  • 3 large ripe avocados (about 2 cups)
  • juice and zest from two and a half limes (I added half a lime more juice)
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup or honey We used maple syrup)
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
  • 1/4 tsp sea salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

The Filling is rather easy, another one of those dump into your food processor and let it do its job.
I halved and scooped out every little bit of flesh from my avocados - I bought them two days ago and bought semi hard ones, that by the time I made the pie they were perfect.
I did tweak here, with the lime juice, I added half a lime more to the filling than the original. 
I did a taste test when Id used all the original recipes ingredients, and wanted to add a little more juice, and a splash more maple syrup to really mask the fact we are using avocado as the base. 
If you decided to use maple syrup instead of honey for your filling, please us 100% maple syrup and not the flavoured stuff, I understand that the 100% is much more expensive, but it is worth the health benefits to not use anything with processed sugar.
 this is what I bought for ours, its what we buy for our home made granola, and when I sweeten recipes this is what we use it retails for around $7.00 a bottle. 

so now that your filling is all smooth and silky, you will want to pour that lovely green base onto your pie crust....and the results...something a little like this...


now if you aren't paleo and want to make this, you can serve it with whipped cream...but if you want to stay true and not stray, try some amazing coconut whipped cream

Our Taste rating out of 10 is a whopping 8/10
Really flavorful and quirky way of making a pie paleo. You don't feel like you are missing out..or that you are eating something that is 'healthy' for you, this is a genuine dessert that I would proudly take to any dinner party as my contribution. 
Budget Rating out of 10
We give this 4/10 only because of the price of avocados at the time of making this recipe, we paid $3.98 each for our avocados, which was rather pricey, if they were cheaper then budget rating would have gone up. The dates and chocolate came to $7combined..and we did have to buy more maple syrup but that is a staple in our house, just pricey to replace.
Repeatability  7/10, we really liked it! we sold it to the tea cup humans as a lime and chocolate pie (no mention of the avocado) and both were happy to have seconds, there is barely a hint of the avocado taste in the filling, I couldn't taste it, John said he could ( I think he so couldn't) I would make this maybe once every two months, or if I was to bring something to a party or bbq, this would the be dessert I would bring.

Please do give this a try, its an amazing assault on the taste buds! you will not be disapointed with this one guys I promise, and a thankyou to the guilty kitchen for making such a fantastic recipe.
Have a great wednesday guys!
xx  Courtney and John



1 comment:

  1. The pie looks wonderful although I can't believe you used avocados for it. Wish I liked them more.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for the lovely comments! it makes my day to know that Im not babbling to myself!
Ink and Love
Courtney
xx