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Finding balance with food, movement, and community for my (dairy-free) family.

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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Fruit Pizza: Dairy-Free and Whole Grain with a Cheesecake Vibe

Whole-Grain, Dairy-Free Fruit Pizza
I recently set out to make a whole-grain dairy-free fruit pizza, but ended up with something that tasted surprisingly like cheesecake.  Happy mistake!

It's always been a dream of mine to make a soy-free, dairy-free cheesecake-ish sort of thing, so I foresee experimenting further with this recipe to produce something even more like cheesecake.

Fruit pizza sounds healthy, but when I started looking at recipes, it turns out that the crust is usually made with sugar cookie dough.  Healthy?  Not so much.

For my version, I started with the crust recipe from the blueberry oatmeal bars in Jessica Seinfeld's  Deceptively Delicious and this cashew sour cream recipe and then modified liberally.

The crust is a bit more crumbly than I'd like, but chilling it in the refrigerator helps reduce the crumbs.  Bonus:  topped with blueberries and strawberries it makes a nice patriotic dessert for July 4th (which somehow seems to happening next week.  How did that sneak up on me?)

Fruit Pizza

Step 1:  Start soaking your cashews the night (or at least several hours) before you want to make your pizza.
Step 2:  Make and bake the whole grain fruit pizza crust.
Step 3:  Use the soaked cashews to make the creamy topping.
Step 4:  Top generously stawberries and blueberries (fresh or frozen*) or other seasonal fruits.

Whole Grain Fruit Pizza Crust

1 cup old-fashioned oats
1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons honey
1/2 cup coconut oil


Directions:
1.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2.  Combine the oats, flour, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt and mix well.   
3.  Stir in vanilla and honey.  
4.  Add the coconut oil and use two knives or a pastry blender to combine.  
5.  Press the crust into a greased pie pan.  
6.  Bake 17-20 minutes.  

Creamy Topping

1 cup raw cashews 
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon granulated sweetener (sucanat, evaporated cane juice, sugar, etc.)

Directions:
1.  Cover cashews in warm water and leave to soak overnight (or at least for several hours)
2.  Strain the water off of the cashews and rinse.  
3.   Using a food processor or immersion blender, combine cashews, salt, apple cider vinegar, sugar, and vanilla until smooth.  This will take a bit.  I couldn't achieve the texture I wanted in my food processor, but the immersion blender did the trick.  

*Frozen blueberries taste great as a topping and look fine at first, but as they defrost they send blueberry juice veining across the creamy topping giving it a bit of a murder-scene effect--tasty, but slightly creepy.

Shared at Friday Food Flicks Finale (so sad it's ending!) and at Allergy Free Wednesday.


2 comments:

  1. Did somebody say it tastes like cheesecake? I'm in. Seriously it looks good.

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  2. Yes. I tastes like a "cheesecake square" type dessert to me. Of course, when I say things like that I always feel like I need to offer the caveat that I've been dairy-free for about 4 years, so it's been a long time since I've had cheesecake to which to compare. :)

    Since the cashew recipe I based this on was for sour cream, I was thinking when I added the small amount of vanilla and sugar it might be yogurt-like, but it's much thicker, creamier, and not as tangy.

    My kids and I have really enjoyed it.

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