Dairy-Free Pie Crust

Pie crust is a versatile ingredient in so many recipes- pot pie, pumpkin pie, quiche, and the list goes on! Who doesn’t enjoy a good pie crust? I particularly love this recipe because of the addition of vinegar. I dislike sweet pie crusts, especially paired with a sweet filling. The slight zing of the vinegar makes everything I put in the pie crust delicious!

My family has used this pie crust for my whole life- and I know why! It’s flakey, delicious, and cheap to make. Best of all, it is dairy-free!

Recipe

Ingredients:

• 5 cups of flour
• 2 cups and 2 tablespoons of shortening
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• Water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Whisk the flour and salt together.
3. Add the shortening and cut it into the flour mixture with a fork until the shortening is about pea size. Be sure to not work it too much, otherwise it will turn into a strange clump of dough and won’t be flakey.
4. Crack the egg into a liquid measuring cup and add the vinegar. Beat it slightly, then fill up to the 1 cup line with water.
5. Pour the liquid slowly into the flour and shortening mixture and stir until it becomes a dough. It might be slightly crumbly, but that is normal. You might be tempted to add more liquid, but I promise it’s enough! Try not to stir it too much or the pie crust will become tough.
6. Dump the dough out onto the floured counter (Or some parchment paper) and roll it out to the size and shape of your pie tin. It should make three or four 8-9 inch pie crusts. The more times you roll it out, the tougher it becomes.
7. Place the pie crusts into greased pie tins and poke holes with a fork all over the crust. If you have dry beans or baking weights add them on top of parchment paper and place them in the pie crust for the first 10 minutes of baking. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.
8. Let the pie crusts cool and fill with your favorite filling. In these pictures, I chose to use banana cream filling! Yum!

Side notes:

• As I said, the more you mess with the dough, the tougher it will become. I try to roll out each individual pie crust only once and fold the extra dough down into the pie crust to make pretty edges.
• One of my family’s favorite ways to use the last bits and pieces of pie dough is to place them on cookie sheets and liberally sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar and then bake them for 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees. A delicious way to use up leftover dough! (And it pairs wonderfully with warm homemade pudding!)

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Dairy-Free Hot Fudge Sauce

Hot fudge is that lovely chocolatey, silky, rich sauce to top ice cream- but sometimes I just don’t want to deal with the dairy in it. On good days, taking a lactase pill works just fine. Other days, my stomach vetoes dairy.

If you came here for a healthy dairy-free hot fudge recipe… sorry to tell you, but this is the wrong blog! I love having delicious desserts. Dairy-free doesn’t have to mean healthy.

When I found out I was lactose-intolerant, I was devastated! Before then, I had never had dairy-free food, and frankly, I was scared. The trick is finding the right recipes that work with the flavors of the dairy-free ingredients. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those recipes! Chocolate and coconut work so well together, so why not make a hot fudge sauce with coconut cream?

I took to Pinterest to gather details on what other people have done before me. I found a lovely recipe by SimplyWhisked.com and tweaked it to fit my tastebuds. The hot fudge sauce I created is a darker version made with coconut cream instead of coconut milk. I hope you find this recipe as decadent as I did!

This is easy to mix into a recipe of Nice cream (ice cream made with frozen bananas)- I chose to make a peanut butter Nice cream and mixed the fudge in. I LOVE Tillamook’s peanut butter chocolate ice cream, so I wanted to attempt to replicate it. The recipe is in the works, so it will be on here soon!

Recipe:

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup canned coconut cream
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup plus 2 tbs of cocoa powder
• 1 cup of your choice of dairy-free chocolate chips (I used a blend of semi-sweet and dark)
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 1/2 tsp of salt

Directions

1. In preparation, you can either let your can of coconut cream stand upright in the fridge or let it sit upright in your cupboard. If you leave it in the fridge, it is easier to scoop out the top layer of cream. Of course, the whole can is coconut cream, but the creamiest part floats to the top. Scoop the top off until you have the 2/3 cup of coconut cream needed.
2. Place the coconut cream, brown sugar, cocoa powder, chocolate chips, vanilla, and salt into a small saucepan- I would sift the cocoa powder into the mixture to avoid any lumps- and heat it on medium heat, stirring often to break up the clumps of chocolate (or cocoa powder- I see ya’ll who don’t have time to sift the cocoa powder.)
3. Heat it until the mixture is smooth and all the chocolate is melted.
4. Take it off the heat and let it cool, like a patient person. (I totally snuck a taste test with hopes that my tongue wouldn’t be burned off. Luckily, it wasn’t. If you can’t tell, adrenaline junkie is my middle name.)
5. You can use it now on some dairy-free ice cream, or you can stick it in the fridge until you want to use it. After a night in the fridge, it turns into a thick, creamy fudge! So you can enjoy it by the spoonful hot OR cold. You can store it in the fridge for four or five days, but you be the judge of it by the smell.

Side Notes:

• I used a blend of 45% to 60% dark chocolate, so my hot fudge turned out pretty dark- just how I like it! If you prefer milk chocolate, find a dairy-free chocolate brand and experiment with amounts of white, milk, and dark chocolate. Enjoy Life has a couple good options. My favorite kind of chocolate to use is Guittard for the quality and varying percentages of chocolate. From my experience, they have dairy-free chocolate from 45% and on, but read the label before you buy it! From my knowledge, it isn’t dairy allergy friendly, so maybe Enjoy Life or another allergy conscious brand would be a better choice for those with dairy-allergies.
• This coconut fudge is VERY chocolatey! I wanted it to taste like chocolate with only a hint of coconut on the back of your palate. If you prefer a stronger coconut flavor, I would remove the 2 Tbs of cocoa powder in the recipe.