So fruit with fruit, and only fruit. Hmm, why then do nuts and fruit so often mingle? Why is trail mix so awesome and addictive? Um, Nature, WTF?
So I set out to make a nut-free pie crust. Is coconut a fruit? It is today.
Red Heart Plum Pie w. Coconut Lime Crust
Coconut Lime Crust:
2 cups of raw, shredded, dried coconut
3/4 cup melted coconut 'manna' or 'butter', you know, the product in the jar that is dried coconut made into a paste. I have tried to make this twice in my stone grinder, and both times it has turned out beautiful and silky, except for it is gray from some black oily sludge in the wheel well. Awesome. Artisana makes a nice coconut butter. Don't confuse this product with coconut oil. I probably would have tried to use some melted coconut oil in this recipe but both my gallons of coconut oil are 'off' so I was making do with what I had on hand.
2 teaspoons of fresh lime juice
3/4 teaspoon finely grated lime zest
a large pinch of Himalayan sea salt
1 tablespoon of lucuma powder
1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground vanilla beans
process all in a food processor with an 's' blade until it forms a wall. you may need to push the batter down and form a few walls to make sure all of the ingredients are stiff enough to go into the pie shell.
transfer most of the contents into a 9 inch pie shell with a removable bottom, or if you have a bigger pie shell you can use all of the crust mix. I just ate the extra in a bowl with a spoon (about 1/2 cup I left out so the crust wasn't crazy thick)
press the coconut mixture into the pie shell with the back of a spoon and make sure it is evenly distributed.
place in fridge or freezer to set.
Red Heart Plum Filling:
STEP 1:
2.5 oz irish moss (thoroughly rinse and then soak irish moss in clean water overnight in your fridge in an airtight container, then thoroughly shake excess water off before weighing)
put the irish moss in the high speed blender and break it up into small pieces. i did this so that when i blended everything together it wouldn't take extra long to break down the moss and the mixture wouldn't heat up.
take the irish moss bits out of the blender and put to the side in a bowl.
STEP 2:
8 red heart plums, halved and pitted
blend in a high speed blender to puree. the skins are a tad bitter, take them off and discard if you want before blending, but I didn't.
add: 1/4 cup of fresh lime juice
3/4 tsp or so of fresh lime zest
1/4 tsp vanilla bean
3-4 drops of liquid stevia
the broken down irish moss from step 1
blend on high in a high speed blender until totally smooth, but make sure it stays pretty cool.
STEP 3:
5-6 red heart plums, halved, pitted and quartered
place the plums in the bottom of the coconut pie crust and sprinkle with a few pinches of lime zest.
pour the plum puree evenly over top, cover and place in fridge to set for a few hours or overnight.
Did I like it?
I ate the whole pie. It wasn't in one sitting though, it was in 2 sittings. The first sitting I had 2 slices.
I would, however, recommend for anyone who doesn't have sugar issues to add some agave to the plum puree to make it a bit more palatable for the sweet-tooth.
It could also do with a touch more irish moss, my measurements were a guess based on a recipe in a Cafe Gratitude book of liquid vs. moss in lemon meringue pie. Also, I didn't want to risk the pie tasting like irish moss. It smells like mothballs sometimes but it magically never ends up altering the taste of any dish. yay!
If you want to combine fruit and nuts and don't care about happy guts then I bet an orange zest cashew cream would be pretty killer on top of this!
