Strawberry Pie: Vegan, Gluten Free, Flourless, and more

Happy Independence Day for my American viewers! When it comes to the food, the 4th of July and Thanksgiving are very much alike. Most of you are probably scratching your heads thinking "How? Are you crazy? Thanksgiving is about the turkey and mashed potatoes but the 4th is about the BBQ and that's all we care about" and I get that but hear me out because when it comes to similarities between two seemingly very unlike things, there is way more than meets the eye.

I hate to say this on a day about the freedom Americans have (to eat whatever they want) but the typical American diet focuses very much on meat, refined carbohydrates, added sugars, preservatives, and lots of junk your body doesn't need. This mantra tends to be even more pronounced on holidays, which we often see as a perfect excuse to indulge. On Valentine's day, we seek out the chocolates we know our loved ones will love. McDonald's comes back out with their shamrock shakes for St. Patrick's Day. And who doesn't love a peep on Easter? If there's no cake, it's not a birthday party. Halloween is the catalyst for some of the worst sugar hangovers I've ever seen. Thanksgiving is about food in general, most of which is not exactly diet friendly. And there's a reason Christmas and cookies both start with C.

On the 4th of July, the food traditions we look forward to are the BBQ (usually not jackfruit), putting BBQ on the highly processed buns, potato salad, corn on the cob, lemonade, and watermelon. The potato salad could have anything under the moon in it that some of us would rather not have because if it's a "salad" there's never just one ingredient. Most corn that's not organic is genetically modified and the lemonade most likely is loaded with added and refined sugars. And it's certainly not a bad thing that many people do indulge on a day that we are celebrating our freedom, including our freedom to do so.

However, much of that is clearly cheat food and because I've been sticking with fairly clean plant based eating for long enough, I do not crave that indulgence. I just don't want it. It's not that I don't love those foods and never did. There was a time that I was eating the standard American diet. Since I've taken initiative and made changes for the better, while I look forward to holidays and the non food parts of them, indulging in the foods that many would say the 4th of July (and other holidays) would be incomplete without is certainly not what I look forward to. My body no longer wants the thingsthat the standard American diet provides in high doses and neither do I.

I certainly am not the only one who's like that. Some people may be fellow vegans or vegetarians. Some may be keto, gluten free, paleo, or practicing some other chosen lifestyle with which consumption of traditional holiday foods does not align. Others may have multiple food allergies that mean they can't eat traditional foods so they can't look forward to enjoying the foods they simply never knew. While I haven't had to deal with this yet because I've only been vegan for almost five months, I've been warned that Thanksgiving is an absolute nightmare for vegans and I can understand why. It's a challenge even if you're simply health conscious like I was for a long time before I went vegan.

Before I go off too much on a tangent, because most vegans were not raised that way (myself included), many of us probably do crave some traditional flavors and want to replicate them in a way that makes sense for our goals, values, and lifestyle. I've always loved a good fruit dessert. Chocolate is just so ubiquitous in desserts that while I have absolutely nothing against chocolate, I tend to prefer something different. If rather my chocolate come in a bar that I eat straight, not in something for which you can't see the other ingredients. Are nut butters only found in cookies of you don't want it paired with chocolate? Fruit is the perfect way to achieve that classic vision that is not the all too ubiquitous chocolate chip cookie or cake.

Yet fruit desserts still have one problem that they share in common with chocolate desserts: the gluten and sometimes the sugars! Gluten free baking is so much more complicated than baking with gluten because not all gluten free flours are equal and you may need to use multiple, or add other ingredients. Luckily, instead of trying to figure out that whole mumbo jumbo, anything flourless is inherently gluten free. I am still trying to sort through this mumbo jumbo and learn how to do it and not have my gluten free baking repertoire be limited to flourless alone but I love knowing that if I want a treat that doesn't involve frying my brain, I can count on the flourless recipes to give me just that.

That's exactly why I made the strawberry pie that I did. I took the concept of a flourless cookie recipe I live streamed about the other day and made it the crust of the pie and I made a simple filling of strawberries, cinnamon, and agave to go with it.

The cookie recipe comes from Bigger Bolder Baking and I just had to substitute for an egg to veganize it. It's only three ingredients so what could be easier? Here is the recipe that I used:

1 cup of nut/seed butter
1 cup of sugar
Replace 1 egg
1 standard package of strawberries
Agave and cinnamon in small quantities (enough to make the filling sticky)

Preheat oven to 350° and bake for 15-20 minutes. This is one of the easiest pie recipes I have ever made and it's a keeper. I will definitely be doing this one again and again.