I've decided to come up with a decadent, low fat pie crust substitute. I love the fluffiness of high-fat Crisco-based crusts, and the yummy wheatiness of a high-fat oil based crust, and I do believe that no good desert is fat or sugar free (unless you work really hard at it), and yet, well, those should always be options as well. This recipe will NOT be vegan, as it will contain things like eggs and honey. I'm sure there's some agar-ish or egg-substitute way of making this, and I'll deal with that later. I will however ax all the milk containing ingredients -- after all, I'm allergic, and I have to eat what I make. Anyway, at the moment, I'd like to work with what's at least already readily available on the sane side of the Universe.
So then, I'm playing around with the following recipes:
Pavlova (read more about it here)
Graham Crackers (I'll substitute a few milk-ish ingredients to make the dough Parve)
The basic idea is to make the graham crackers first, sans the topping (unless it's for apple or pumpkin, or perhaps a pear/peach/vanilla-containing pie), and then crumble them fairly finely. Then make the Pavlova ingredients, without baking them. Instead, hand-folding the crumbled graham crackers into the Pavlova, in the right proportions, to make a fluffy yet well-binding dough. I'd thought about just using the Pavlova as a pie crust shell, but I just don't feel that it would really support a good batch of pie filling, even if it where all magically baked "perfectly." It would be too - either too flexible or too crumbly, with no "mortar" to hold the Pavlova together once it was baked.
The idea actually came because I got to thinking, "What if I made an egg-white based pie shell?" Then I thought, "Ik. Who would eat that?!" Well, if it's a meringue-based shell, just with some good support structure built into it, then it should work. My other option is to make some kind of cookie-dough, but really, even that is fairly high-fat, and often the fats required are just not defendable at all. Well, high-fat anything isn't actually defendable unless you're already thin and spend all day running around, but whatever. For most of us, we ought to be more careful about it. That, and the carbs.
Obviously, this starts out as a high-carb recipe. But you know, a lot of that really isn't necessary. I'm planning on substituting tapioca starch for the powdered sugar in the Pavlova (and then adding a few packets of Sun Crystals Stevia), and pulling a similar stunt on the graham crackers. Stevia's sweetness doesn't change when it's baked, and really, the powdered sugar in the Pavlova just provides volume and something for the Cream of Tarter to work with for stiffening: Tapioca starch can do the exact same thing, while being a complex carb, rather than a simple sugar. Yes, Sun Crystals contain trace amounts of sugar. Honestly? In that small amount? A person would have to have severe diabetes in order to really care about that. The point is, Stevia, in an essentially no-calorie way, adds tons of sweetness and hyper-volumizes the sweetness of any sugar that is present. Probably even a bit of the complex-carbs as well.
So, I'm going to seriously mess with both recipes, once I have the ingredients ready. I'm still working up the nerve to attempt the SNLish Betty White Muffin. Somehow, I just... I don't have the courage! Ak! That, and just, what, a week or two ago? I totally fudged up the fudge beyond belief, and have had to suffer through eating all that, since money's tight and I can't afford to just throw away even remotely edible food. Anyway, I've been on kind of a chocolate-free diet lately. It's just... Going to have to wait. Anyway, this pie crust recipe is also going to have to wait a bit. I don't -have- to have pie right away or anything. It was just - an idea :)
PS. Hat tip to this site! Excellent!
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