Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Yields: 8 servings

 

Ingredients: 

 

For the pastry:
2 cups cassava flour
2/3 cup cold butter
2 - 4 tbsp cold water
1 tsp sea salt

For the filling:
2 cups chopped rhubarb, fresh or frozen
2 cups chopped strawberries, fresh or frozen
1 cup coconut sugar

 

Directions: 

 

To make the pastry, add the flour and salt to a large mixing bowl, then chut up the cold butter and add it.  Cut the butter into the flour mixture until it is all combined.  You can use a patry cutter, or 2 knives held together, scissor like.  Slowly sprinkle in 1 tablespoon of water at a time, mixing with your fingers or with the pastry cutter, until you can easily handle the ball of dough.  This will be considerably more sticky and gooey than wheat flour based pastry dough, so don't handle it too much.

 

Once all the flour and butter is combined, roll out your dough.  I like to use 2 sheets of parchment paper, lightly sprinkled with more flour.  Put the dough onto the parchment sheet, sprinkle on some more flour, cover with another sheet and roll it out until it will fit in your pie plate.  I use a deep ceramic pie plate for this, because it will have a lot of filling!  Carefully fit the crust into the pie dish, trim the edges, and set aside while you make the filling.  There should be some crust left over to make a lattice type top.

 

Preheat your oven to 400F

 

To make the filling, if you are starting from frozen, defrost your rhubarb and strawberries and drain the extra fluids.  Add the cut rhubarb and strawberries to a large mixing bowl and dump in the coconut sugar.  Mix it up with a spoon until well combined.  Pour the mixture into the prepared pie crust.

 

Make a lattice top from the trimmings and whatever is left over of the pastry dough.  Mine isn't terribly pretty or professional looking, but hey, I'm a health coach, not a pastry chef!  ;)

Pop it into the oven for 20 minutes at 400F, then reduce the temperature to 350F and bake for another 20 minutes.  Allow to cool before eating.

 

Notes: 

 

Strawberry rhubarb pie has always been one of my absolute favourite pies!  Second only to pumpkin pie.  We had quite a lot of rhubarb in the neighbourhood this year, so I've got a lot in my freezer.  I traded a basket of my raspberries for a bag full of rhubarb from one of my neighbours.

I had in the past made pie crusts with coconut flour, and I like coconut flour crusts, but I thought I'd try to make a crust that would look and feel a bit more like a typical wheat flour crust.  I had some cassava flour in the cupboard so figured I'd give it a go.  I used the regular ol' Joy of Cooking pie crust recipe, and just replaced the pastry flour with cassava, and there you have it.  The texture is a little different than "regular" crust, it's a bit chewy on the bottom, I think maybe browning the crust for a few minutes in the oven before putting the filling in might help this.  The top lattice is properly crumbly, and the overall flavour of the crust is deliciously buttery.   The filling is perfect, not too sweet, not too tart.  The coconut sugar doesn't overpower with a coconutty flavour in the least, and has a lower glycemic load than regular refined white sugar.  You could probably even reduce the sugar to just 1/2 a cup if you think this may be too sweet for your tastes.