Ingredients
Basic Recipe
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 cup blanched almond flour
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 flax eggs (2 Tbsp ground flax + 1/2 cup hot water)
- 1/4 cup virgin coconut oil, unsalted butter, or ghee, melted and cooled slightly
Optional - Sweet Crust
- 2 tsp white or raw sugar for a sweet crust
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1/4 - 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon or cardamom
Instructions
Making the dough
- Preheat oven to 180C.
- Prepare the flax eggs and set aside to thicken.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together coconut flour, almond flour and salt, breaking up any lumps.
- Add the eggs and oil to bowl, stirring until completely combined.
- Press dough evenly in bottom and sides of an 8-inch or 9-inch pie pan or tart tin.
Baking Options
- Unbaked Crust: the crust is ready for use in recipes that call for adding the filling to an unbaked crust before baking. It can also be loosely covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated until ready to fill and bake.
- Par-baked Crust: the crust is ready for use in recipes that call for adding the filling to a par-baked crust before baking. Prick the bottom of crust 2 or 3 times with fork (to release steam). Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and use in recipes calling for par-baked crust.
- Fully-baked Crust: Prick the bottom of crust 2 or 3 times with fork (to release steam). Bake in preheated oven for 23 to 27 minutes until light golden brown. Cool on a wire rack and use in recipes calling for fully-baked crust.
Notes
- Okay, so I was having a dilemma with the preparations for catering the vegan half of the fingerfood for my friends hens gathering... I had catered a 60th birthday for my mother late the previous year and the custard tarts I had made were very popular... The problem with that was that the crust i had used was a simple short crust recipe which is basically the same as a shortbread biscuit... by the end of the event the tarts were falling apart but no one cared because they were delicious. That's great, but I figured we needed to improve if they were going to be transported and I needed to prep and store them potentially out of the fridge... This recipe was an awesome find, it performed really well is super easy and very customisable and dare I say much healthier than my previous attempts.
- Draw back - You do need to have coconut flour... its not optional, sorry.
- Bonus - Its gluten free and its still tasty!
- You can minimise the coconut oil, I did a double batch and only used 1/3 cup and it could have been less. Because there was already coconut in the crust i could use the regular cheap coconut oil and not fork out for the de-odourised stuffs.