I’m not typically a pie person.  I mean, I love a good pie if it’s made well and the ingredients are fresh but I’m much more likely to bake a cake.  That’s why I haven’t experimented much with GF and paleo pie crusts.  We all have our thing right?  Until very recentIy I didn’t even own a fancy pie dish!  It was actually when I was trying to come up with this recipe that I realized I needed a pie dish.  I have the standard pyrex pie dish that comes in those pyrex tupperware sets, but I wanted something pretty that would photograph well.  I’m such a sucker for cute serving dishes anyway so it didn’t take me long to convince myself that I “needed” to go pick out a pie dish!

We were having the family over a few days after my pie dish purchase and I figured why not try out the new recipe on my relatives.  My sister is on a paleo diet and it seems like the whole family is trying to eat healthy these days so I’m always experimenting with paleo desserts when we get together so that there is something for everyone.  Plus that gives me a house full of judges who can let me know if its a “woohoo” or a “try again”.  We all love chocolate, the flavor of hazelnuts, and how stinkin’ amazing they taste when you pair them up.  Chocolate and hazelnuts are like the dynamic duo, you just can’t go wrong.  So I attempted this chocolate hazelnut cream pie to serve when everyone was over, but the crust didn’t taste quite right.  It had a sort of burnt flavor that came on a little strong.  Most of the pie was eaten up anyhow, and the only people who really noticed the flavor being a little off were my sister and I which was enough for me.  The filling however was heavenly so we ended up just spooning the rest of it right out of the dish.  Yup just her and I later that night, with wine I believe.  I have been meaning to give the recipe another go and I think I nailed it this time!

Hazelnuts have an amazing flavor but they are potent so you have to be careful not to over do it.  I had originally included hazelnuts in the crust and I think that’s what gave it such a harsh flavor.  I left them out of the crust this time and it lightened up the flavor making for a slightly crunchy crust that’s not too sweet.  Perfect!  You don’t know how hard it was not to just dig into this thing once it was done!  After I photographed it and cut into it though, I totally licked that spatula clean!  My 10 year old and 5 year old really liked it too.  They finished up the mixture for the filling from the vitamix after the pie dish was filled.  Couldn’t keep their little fingers out of there!  Considering it’s made of completely wholesome ingredients and no processed sugars, I was not about to stop them!

Ingredients

For the Crust

1 cup almond meal

3/4 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

4 Tbs honey

1/4 cup coconut oil

1/2 tsp baking soda

For the Cream Filling

1 14oz can coconut cream

7 dates, soaked in warm water for 10 minutes

1/4 cup hazelnuts

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

Method

Grease a 9 inch pie dish or baking pan and preheat your oven to 350*F.  Starting with the first ingredient for the pie crust, place all the ingredients in a food processor.  Process until completely combined.  It should feel like a grainy dough.  Press the dough for the crust into the greased dish until it’s evenly spread out.  Place the crust in the oven for 10 minutes or until slightly browned.

Once you have removed your pie crust from the oven, let it cool for about 20 minutes.  Somewhere in that 20 minutes you can blend up the ingredients for the cream filling.  Starting with the coconut cream, add all of the ingredient for the cream filling to your blender.  Blend together until well combined and you can no longer see pieces of the dates or hazelnuts.

Now you’re ready to pour the mixture for the filling into the pie crust.  After you do that refrigerate it for at least an hour so the cream can set.  Once that’s done, grab a spoon and dig in!

My birthday was last month and the whole family came over for dinner.  I have a rule I follow which states that I do not bake my own birthday cake.  It’s the principle of it really.  It’s my birthday, bring me a cake people!  My mom sweetly volunteered to make my cake, but crazy me just couldn’t not make a dessert of any sort since everyone was coming to our place.  I had to make something!

I also had those who are vegan and lactose intolerant in mind because I was pretty sure that my mother’s lovely cake would contain both.  We had a bunch of mangoes in the fridge and I thought how awesome would mangoes taste with coconut cream?! I started salivating just thinking about it, so I ran to the pantry to grab a can of coconut cream and put it in the freezer for a couple of hours.

When making a batch of coconut whipped cream, I usually refrigerate my coconut cream over night.  It just works better that way, but when in a pinch an hour or two in the freezer is workable too.  I didn’t want to add a lot of sugar, so I made a mango puree in the nutribullet and folded it into the coconut whipped cream.  Just those two things together were amazing!  I could have spooned the whole bowl myself, but sharing is caring so I started putting the dessert together.  While I was at it, I decided to make it paleo and use a tad of coconut sugar to sweeten it.

The pineapple chunks I used were frozen and I thawed them for an hour and gave them a pat with a paper towel before adding them to the bowl.  Now, when I made this for my birthday dinner I had added white nectarines as the bottom layer of the trifle dish, but the nectarines were deemed unworthy by some of the relatives so I left them out the second time I made the parfait.  I actually enjoyed the nectarines, but pineapples and mangoes do taste pretty perfect together!

Ingredients

3 mangoes

2 cups pineapple chunks (fresh or frozen)

1 12 oz can coconut cream

2 Tbs coconut sugar

Method

Cut two mangoes into little chunks and thaw your pineapple ahead of time if necessary.

Puree one of the mangoes in a bullet, blender, or food processor. Place the mango puree in the fridge.  You would usually just use the cream part of the coconut cream and leave out the water that is left at the bottom of the can, but since this becomes almost mousse like I used all of it. Pour the coconut cream and coconut sugar into the bowl of your mixer.  Mix on medium speed until the cream starts to thicken, then mix on high speed until light and fluffy. About 2 minutes.  Remove the mango puree from the fridge and gently fold it into the coconut whipped cream.

Now you can assemble your parfait starting with the mangoes.  Whether you’re layering it in one big bowl or placing the mango pineapple parfait into individual bowls start with the mangoes.  Then add a layer of the mango coconut cream, a layer of pineapples, another layer of coconut cream, and top it with mango pieces.

Place it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before serving.

If by chance you end up with leftovers, pour it into popsicle molds and freeze for 3 hours or more.  The chunks of fruit and coconut cream made delish popsicles!

Summer days are here again, and there is nothing better than an ice cold treat on a hot summer day!  My girls have been enjoying their ice cream while I just stare and drool.  Now let me explain why I’m not eating spoonfuls of ice cream and sharing in the brain freezes with them. My doctor told me a few months ago that I need to intake more protein and that my cholesterol was a tad high.

That caught me off guard, since I don’t really eat anything high in fat.  Well, other than cheese.  I’m basically a mouse, so I decided that must be what’s causing it.  I have stopped eating cheese for the most part as apposed to having it on top of everything I eat, and cut out other dairy items that are high in fat.  My last test results showed a much lower level of bad cholesterol or LDL.

I love ice cream though, always have.  In my college days I would order dessert before I had dinner just to make sure that I had room for it.  I know, it was a problem.  I realized years later that my body was probably not very happy with me. Growing up in a house where you hardly ever found anything artificial or super sweet, it wasn’t that difficult for me to return to the old ways.  It has taken some inner strength to not give in to ice cream though!   I’ll have a spoon now and then but nothing crazy!

Luckily I recently discovered banana ice cream, which we like to call “nana cream”.  That has saved me from attacking a tub of ice cream more than once!  I really wanted something a little different a few weeks back, something coffee flavored and creamy.  I know, that’s a very specific craving, but I wanted it!  I was pondering how to make such a thing, and then I remembered the Donut House Coconut Mocha Kcups that my bestie got me hooked on last summer.  There is always coconut cream in my cabinet, so I grabbed it and in the blender it went.

I added some cocoa powder, instant coffee, vanilla extract, and sweetened it with coconut sugar.  I don’t like my coffee that sweet so go ahead and add more sugar if you need to.  I had to blend it and taste it a couple of times before the mixture seemed right, but 4 hours later I had these Coconut Mocha Cream Pops.  Needless to say, I was very happy!  They taste exactly like the Coconut Mocha Kcups! There’s a couple in my freezer at the moment actually.  I may just have to bust one out a little later!

Ingredients

13oz can coconut cream

1 tsp cocoa powder

3 1/2 tsp instant coffee

1 Tbs coconut sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Place all ingredients into a blender or food processor.  I used my Nutribullet since it’s always on my kitchen counter.  Blend it all up until it is completely mixed together then poor the mixture into popsicle molds.  It should fill 5 or 6 regular size popsicle molds.  I only had four, so I poured the rest of the mixture into silicone ice cube molds.  That worked out really well too.  Pop them into the freezer for 4 hours or more, and you have yourself a super tasty cool summer treat!