Eureeka!

Some times it's three strikes you're out. In this case, it's third times a charm. You see, I've been attempting to bake a clean, or reasonably so, pie since I saw the recent issue of Clean Eating magazine.

First attempt was the cover recipe: banana chocolate freezer pie. Meh. Not successful, in that I don't like eating shards of ice in my pie. Might as well just stick to my breakfast smoothie for those flavors.

Second attempt was a variation on their strawberry lime pie. I didn't want to use tofu in my pie (ask me about the tofu "cheesecake" my sister used to bring home from the hippie bakery in the 70s some time), so I used greek yogurt instead. It didn't set up, plus, I couldn't find no salt cottage cheese, so the flavors were off.

Third attempt was a variation of a no-bake berry cheesecake recipe. Eureeka. The pie set, it tastes good, and it's actually full of healthy, low fat, whole grain ingredients. In fact, with ingredients like fruit, oats, almonds, whole wheat, low fat cream cheese and fat free greek yogurt, I just had a slice for breakfast. ;)

Strawberry Cheesecake Pie

Crust:

1/2 c oat flour
1/2 c almond flour
1/2 c white whole wheat flour
1/4 c rice flour
1/4 c cocoa roast almonds, finely ground (I couldn't dig out my regular almonds from the freezer, and I had these in the pantry. Feel free to use regular almonds)
3 T butter, cold and cut into chunks
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t sea salt
1 1/2 t splenda (you could use 2 T agave or brown rice syrup in place of splenda)

Mix flours and other dry ingredients together in bowl of a food processor. Pulse to combine. With processor running, add in the cold butter and process until it has the appearance of large crumbs. Slowly add in the water until the dough combines into a ball. If you need to add more flour because it's too sticky, now would be the time. (I originally started with 1/4 c white wheat flour, but needed a little more, which is why I put 1/2 c in the ingredients list) BTW, the reason I'm using white wheat flour and rice flour is because I don't have whole wheat pastry flour, plus I was trying to make this a lower gluten crust.)

Remove the dough from the processor bowl, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for about 15-20 minutes. In the meantime, preheat your oven to 375.

After your dough has chilled and the oven has heated, press the dough into your pie pan. You'll note that this is what could be termed a "short" crust. It acts more like shortbread than a stretchy dough that you'd roll out. Bake the crust for 20 minutes at 375. Allow to cool completely before you fill the crust.

The filling:

1 1/2 lbs strawberries, hulled and quartered. (1 pound goes into the pie, the 1/2 pound you'll cook down as a topping)
1/4 cup water
2 packets of unflavored gelatin
1 1/2 packages of low fat Neufchatel cheese (aka low fat cream cheese. I don't know why they just don't call it cream cheese... whatever...)
1 6 oz container Chobani fat free vanilla greek yogurt (this stuff is like crack, I tell you)
1/2 c. splenda (you can use real sugar if you want to)
2 packets of True Lemon lemon crystals or 1 T fresh lemon juice

Pour the 1/4 cup of water into a small sauce pan. Sprinkle the 2 packets of gelatin over the water and let it soften for about 15 minutes. Stir with a spoon, and over low heat, make sure that the gelatin has all dissolved and that you don't have clumps.

Put the cream cheese, greek yogurt, splenda and about 3-4 cups of the quartered strawberries in the bowl of the food processor. Process until well combined. You'll need to stop a few times and scrape the mixture off the sides of the bowl. When it's thoroughly mixed and you don't see streaks of cream cheese or yogurt in the pink mixture, while processor is going, slowly add the gelatin mixture in through the feed tube of the processor. Pour into cool pie shell. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Topping:

1/2 pound strawberries, hulled and quartered
1 t splenda (again, you can use regular sugar or even agave syrup if you like)
splash of orange juice (if you have, it's not necessary)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, cook down the strawberries until they start to break down.

Here's the pie just after I took it out of the refrigerator this morning and removed the plastic wrap. As you can see, the plastic leaves marks in the top of the pie. It'll still taste great though, and you're going to drizzle strawberry topping on the pie anyway... ;)

And here, my friends, is the final product, mere seconds before I dug my fork into the pie. So, yogurt, fruit, almonds, oats... sounds like breakfast pie to me.