Tuesday, June 8, 2010

A bit nutty...



A few weeks ago I made oatmeal for breakfast with a handful of frozen blueberries. Ever since then I have been craving a slice of heaven in the form of blueberry pie! Not wanting to cancel out the extra effort I've been putting forth in the gym, I needed my sweet treat to be extra healthy. This inspired the birth of the following creation- Vegan Oat-Nut Tarts with fruit filling. I googled the crust and found it here- http://smarterfitter.com/. With my own tweaks the recipe looked like this:

1/2 cup whole almonds

1/2 cup whole pecans

1/2 cup white wheat flour

1 cup rolled oats

3 Tbsp agave nectar

3 Tbsp canola oil

1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350. Toast almonds and pecans for 8 minutes. Put nuts in food processor grind until fine, and put into a large mixing bowl with flour. Put oats in food processor and grind until fine, and combine with nuts/flour. Combine agave nectar, oil, and vanilla together. Mix in with dry ingredients. Once everything is combined, pop the mixing bowl in the fridge for about 10 minutes.
Press the pie crust into a well oiled 9 inch pie pan, or like I did this time, press into a regular sized muffin pan (creating 9 lil' tarts). I will play around with this and see what works best becuase the the muffin pan was not super easy to work with, but you work with what you've got! Pop in the oven for 9-10 minutes, keeping an eye of the crusts.
For the filling I used
2 cups frozen blueberries
2 Tbsp orange juice
1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp water
2 Tbsp agave nectar
2 Tbsp corn starch
Over medium heat cook berries, oj, 1/4 cup water, and agave nectar until nice a bubbly. Mix the remaining water with corn starch, and add to the warm berry mixture (I also made filling with 1 ripe peach instead of blueberries). Ladle the filling into the crusts. Put back in the oven for about 15 minutes.
Carefully remove the tiny tarts using a knife, fork, spoon, whatever you can pry them out with.
Enjoy with a scoop of vanilla frozen yogurt!
I was curious about replacing the corn starch with arrowroot.
Does anyone have an tips on using a healthier atlernative to cornstarch?

3 comments:

  1. i wrote a comment earlier but my computer was being funky. these look awesome! will you make me one each morning and drive it to MNES? :) xoxo

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  2. maybe not EVERY morning!!! Definitely expect some though!!!

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  3. Those look delicious. Name the date, and I will be at your house, expecting 1 or 2 (and I'll bring the coffee!!) :) I LOVE YOUR BLOG!!

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