Before anyone would start feeling sorry for my family, that I feed them only veggies and soups, I show you a sweet treat, that they love.
All of my sweet treats are free from additives, artificial taste enhancers, flavorings, colorings, preservatives, bulking agents and refined sugar.
This time I share the recipe of the pumpkin-apple pie. The pumpkin is hiding at a different place, as you'd expect. ;)
Dough
- 4,5 cups gluten free rolled oat
- 3 cups cooked brown rice, black rice and quinoa mix*
- 2 cups pumpkin puree
- 1 cup dried dates
- 3 Tbsp ground flaxseed
- 9 Tbsp water (plus add a bit, if it's too thick to work with)
- 2 bananas
- optional: cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice mix, cacao powder, ginger. I didn't use any this time.
* If you don't have black rice or quinoa, don't panick! Replace it with brown rice. Or white rice in the worst case. ;)
Apple layer
- 7 pcs middle-big sized sweet apple
Preparation
- Preheat the oven to 175C/350F
- If you don't have cooked rice and quinoa, cook a portion. I always make more, so we can have it for dinner or lunch. So I cook 2 cups quinoa, 1 cup brown and 1 cup black rice with 4-5 cups of water. It becomes fluffier with more water. It will provide a bit more, than double the needed amount. It takes approx 15 minutes in an instant pot. But follow the instructions on the packaging, if you cook it on the stove. In general it takes 15 minutes to cook rice or quinoa, but some types of rice need much more time. If you use the instant pot, everything gets ready at the same time and you don't have to stir.
- Place baking paper into the pan.
- Blend the gluten free rolled oat into a powder. You can skip this step, but the cake will have a different texture.
- Mix the oat and cooked rice and quinoa.
- Blend the bananas, ground flaxseed, pumpkin puree, water, dried dates. If you want to add spices, add them now.
- Mix the oat-rice-quinoa mix with the banana-pumpkin mixture.
- Spread half of the dough on the baking sheet. If it's too thick, consider adding a bit more water.
- Grate the apple with skin on.
- Squeeze the grated apple a bit. Not too much though! You don't want to dry it out. If you you want to spices to the apple, add now.
- Spread the apple on the bottom dough layer.
- Spread the leftover dough on top of the apple.
- You can put some crashed nuts or seeds on top, if you wish so.
- Place the pan into the preheated oven for approx 35-40 minutes. When the top feels solid, it's done and you can remove it from the oven.
- Let it cool, slice and serve.
To raise awarness, I place two nutritional value labels here. They compare my apple pie with a conventional apple pie. I chose an apple pie recipe randomly from the web and used its parameters in Cronometer. The conventional pie contains white flour, refined sugar, butter, eggs. That's why the difference is so big.
It compares only some details, but still it tells a whole story. There's no cholesterol in my version, that's why it's not listed.
- FAT content quinoa version: 1.7g, convetional: 31g. This 31g neary covers the daily recommended fat intake.
- CARBOHYDRATE content quinoa version: 27.9g complete carbs, conventional: 98.2g refined carbs.
- SUGAR content quinoa version: 13g NOT refined, conventional: 57.2g refined. 57.2g exceeds the daily recommended allowance.*
- FIBER content quinoa version: 5.1g, conventional: 4.3g
- PROTEIN content quinoa: 3.4g, conventional: 10.9g
- If we don't look at these details, even the conventional version has acceptable levels of vitamins and minerals. But these differences play a huge role in health or illness.
*The American Heart Association limits the DAILY refined sugar allowance to 36g for men and 24g for women. My personal opinion is, that we shouldn't consume any refined sugars. There's life without it. The natural sugar content of foods is more than enough.
