Healthy Apple Pie

Hello!  Welcome to my blog.  My name is Jeanette.  I am a Team Beachbody Coach who is a homeschooling mom with two children who are ages 5 and 7.  We live in Erie, PA.  We have been seeing signs for the past few weeks that we are in for an early fall.  Local apples began ripening the first week of August!  We are already a couple of apple totes into the season here.  My son is an apple fanatic and typically eats two per day!  This week we are loving the "Paula Reds" from local Burch Farms.  My daughter began asking the other day if we could please make "a healthy apple pie"?  We have been eating clean here for the past 11 months and I have not made a pie during that time!  Well, there was one odd attempt at a chicken pot pie that was more of a dumpling or biscuit sort of thing.  The "clean eating" biscuits for that recipe were actually inedible!  Even by the standards of my husband who is pretty open-minded with my kitchen experiments!  I had made that Chicken Pot Pie at the beginning of this past spring and my family STILL talks about it.  Goodness!  You make 15 great new recipes and one total flop and what does everyone remember??  

Anyways, when my daughter made this recent request for us to please create a healthy apple pie together, I wondered about making a crust without shortening?  I know that some people do use butter which would be a "clean" choice.  Shortening is NOT!  I personally do not have experience with a butter pie crust recipe anyways... So the search was on to find something that would work for the way that we eat these days.  I looked at a variety of clean eating crust recipes online and kept having flashbacks of the scary chicken pot pie/biscuit episode!  I pulled inspiration from a few areas on the crust.  The apple filling is 100% my own thing that I just put together.  When we make pancakes here, I use my Ninja processor to pulverize Quinoa flakes into a flour of sorts.  I thought that it would be neat to incorporate this along with a traditional whole wheat pastry flour.  

Yesterday I purchased something that is entirely new to me ~ "Organic Coconut Palm Sugar".  It is nectar from pure coconut flower blossoms.  It is a natural sweetener that is low glycemic (very cool for a "sugar" to now give anyone that high/crash effect!!) and high nutrient; marked by magnesium, nitrogen, zinc, potassium, calcium and amino acids.  I typically use raw honey as our only sweetener here at home.  But I just couldn't picture how I would thoroughly combine it with all of my apples for my deep dish 9" pie plate??  I wanted something that I could sprinkle.  The Palm Sugar did the trick!  With a total of 5 tablespoons going into the entire pie, I am fine with using this ingredient from time to time.

"Healthy Apple Pie"

* This recipe fits well within a 9" Deep Dish Pie Plate and will serve 8-10

This apple pie is made in a way that is more healthy than a traditional apple pie.  But this is still a dessert!  In our family, we call these things a "sometimes food".  Watch your portion size and do not go overboard with eating apple pie all of the time!  

If you are following the 21 Day Fix program, this is not too far from your nutrition plan.  If you are in the lowest calorie target category of the Fix, the coconut oil in this recipe would go beyond the official limits on your allotted teaspoons. The other calorie category ranges would be pretty close on teaspoons scheduled for the day due to the coconut oil used in the recipe. As a "once in a while thing" this apple pie is much better than many other dessert options. Other than the coconut oil being above your teaspoons for the day, the rest is pretty much Fix-friendly. The apples fit within a purple. The crust fits as a yellow. And the only sugar is Coconut Palm Sugar which is a low glycemic and high nutrient food. This ingredient is the only one that is not included within the 21 Day Fix plans. But an entire 9" deep dish pie has 5 tablespoons of the palm sugar. If you slice it conservatively into 10 servings or go for a more traditional 8 slices, your sugar intake is still not going to be anything crazy. Everything else is just spices, lemon juice, and a sprinkle of sea salt!

Preheat oven to 400.   

Crust Ingredients:

1 1/2 Cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

1/2 Cup Quinoa Flakes (processed into a flour)

1 Tablespoon Palm Sugar

1/4 Teaspoon Sea Salt

2/3 Cup Coconut Oil (as a solid)

3-4 Tablespoons Ice Water

Begin by placing your quinoa flakes in a food processor.  I use my Ninja.  Pulverize them into a flour.  You will still have a bit of "texture" remaining with this flakes.  This is what you see as the specks visible in the ball photo above.  Next add your whole wheat pastry flour, palm sugar and sea salt.  Once your dry ingredients are combined well, incorporate your coconut oil.  Mix gently and do not overwork in such a way that your dough becomes tough.  Finish by adding 3-4 tablespoons of ice water one tablespoon at a time.  Mix dough with your hands.  It will not be very sticky.  Roll into a ball and cover with plastic wrap.  Place in your fridge for 10-15 minutes.  

** If you leave your crust in longer or if it begins to set quickly, you will want to microwave it for 10 seconds or allow it to come up towards room temperature prior to rolling it.  

Divide your ball into a 60/40 (not quite half and half) split.  Take the larger ball and prepare to roll!  The rolling step went very well here.  I used wax paper above and below and a silicone rolling pin.  No additional flour of any sort was needed.  The NEXT step is where we ran into some trouble.  Perhaps a sprinkle of flour would have come in handy??  Now, a little disclaimer here.  My 5 and 7 year old were helping with EACH part of the pie-making process.  They talk to me all.day.long.  So when I went to peel the crust from the wax paper and into the pie plate, things did not go perfectly.  They were like two commentators giving a play-by-play of some shocking Olympic mishap.  At the same time, they were eagerly reaching in with all four of their hands with a goal of assisting me!!  I did get about 80% of my Pampered Chef Deep Dish 9" Pie Plate covered in that initial move from wax paper to dish.  But as you can see in the photo just above the recipe, some patchwork was needed for both the bottom and top crusts.   My stoneware does not require any sort of surface preparation.  The coconut oil does the trick with making this pastry not stick to the dish.    The pie baked beautifully and came out of the pan easily when it was time to serve it this evening.  If the crust had not come through so nicely in that aspect, I would not be blogging the recipe as is!  We would be doing another experiment with it at a future date.  But this crust was delicious and is certainly a keeper! 

Filling Ingredients:

6 Cups of Apples Sliced Uniformly Thin (today we used 9 of the "Paula Red" apples) 

Juice of One Lemon

4 Tablespoons of Coconut Palm Sugar

2 Tablespoons of Ground Cinnamon

1/2 up to 1 Teaspoon of Ground Cloves (use more or less depending on taste)

Dash of Sea Salt

1/8 Cup of Whole Wheat Pastry Flour 

Place your apples in a large bowl.  Top with freshly-squeezed lemon juice.  Sprinkle with dry ingredients and toss to coat.  Add filling to pie dish that already has the bottom crust in place.  Top with strips of remaining crust.  You may sprinkle with bit of palm sugar if desired.  The crumble effect that you see in my recipe photo came through the kids literally adding crumbs of crust on top of my lattice.  :) 

Bake at 400 for 10 minutes.  Reduce heat to 350 and bake for an additional 35 minutes.  I kept an eye on my crust here but it did not become overly-browned.  I was using a rack in the center of the oven.  Check your crust and cover edges with foil mid-baking if necessary.  

Allow pie to cool on a wire rack.  Serve and enjoy!!