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A Healthful Approach to Pie Baking

All fruit sweetened deep dish apple pie
and a dairy free pumpkin pie

Seems the dietary challenged folks always call me. This month I have two tasks: creating an all fruit sweetened, no processed sugar apple pie AND a pie crust made without butter or hydrogenated shortening, both for Thanksgiving. Honestly, I volunteered for this; it’s just the type of challenge I love.

It should be said here, the apple pie is not truly sugar free, the fruit sweetener is inherently made up of sugar from the fruit itself. Hence it is not suitable for all types of diabetes. For that, you should always check with your doctor. But for some types of diabetes and for anyone who desires to cut back on processed sugar, this is a real treat. What could be better than an apple pie filling sweetened entirely with apples? In my experience, fruit sweeteners work best with fruit desserts. The large, deep-dish style of this pie is designed to help feed all the guests this holiday.

These days there is alot of talk about cutting back on hydrogenated fats. For those of you who love their shortening pie crusts, I set out to work with a non-hydrogenated shortening to see if I could achieve the same results.

Back in the days when I operated a bakery, we made our dairy free pies with soy margarine. However, non-hydrogenated shortening has become widely available in the last few years. It is generally made from palm oil, which is solid at room temperature. Experimenting for the pumpkin pie, I found the palm shortening easy enough to work with, yet after baking it tends to set up just a little too solid for my palate. To compensate for this tendency, I have used a small amount of vegetable oil with the shortening.

I realize the classic flaky crust is almost impossible without butter or hydrogenated fat, but my tasters did ask for seconds!

For the filing, soy milk works fine along with the eggs. But for best results, I recommend all natural, soy based non-dairy creamer, available in the refrigerator section of many grocery stores and natural foods stores. It is a bit richer and thicker than the standard soy milk.

However you prefer your pie, I wish you Happy Thanksgiving.

Deep Dish Apple Pie
-all fruit sweetened-
Normally I use Granny Smith apples for baking, for their slight tartness. However, the frozen apple juice and lemon juice in this recipe provide plenty, so I recommend any firm apple, other than Macintosh, in this case.

Pumpkin Pie
Just as I love roasted squash with brown sugar, I prefer the richness of brown sugar in my pumpkin pie filling. It does require blending to break up the lumps in the sugar. If you like, all white sugar may be used instead

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