It has become a tradition for my daughter and her boyfriend to come over for some pie on Pi Day. I have been eating nearly no refined sugar for many years and have drastically reduced my carbohydrate intake for the past few. It’s sort of a half-hearted Keto or Carnivore diet. I cheat way too often to say I follow any diet, but I’ve been trying a bit harder recently. So, making a pie for Pi Day is a bit of a problem.
I found a recipe for a Keto Key Lime Pie. The crust is made from almond flour, but I’m allergic to almonds, so I made it with coconut flour.
Because there’s no gluten, the recipe asks for xanthan gum. Even with the xanthan gum, it was a pain to roll out. It just kept falling apart. I eventually got two crusts made and baked them. I’m not going to win any awards for presentation with these.
The filling needs sweetened condensed milk. Since that’s not (easily? at all?) available in carb-free, I had to make my own by combining cream, butter, and an artificial sweetener — I used monk fruit / erythritol — and boiling it down. (Yes, I let it boil over. Yes, that was a mess to clean up.)
The filling was fairly straight forward with egg yolks, lime zest, lime juice and the condensed milk.
Sadly, the filling didn’t set even after baking for 30 minutes. (well past the 20 minutes the recipe said.) I also made a quick chocolate pie filling after learning my daughter’s boyfriend doesn’t like lime.
They tasted great. I’m not sure I’ll bother making keto pies next year… maybe meat pies and just cheat on the crust?
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