Blueberry Pie, Paleo

I LOVE Blueberry Pie, so with the bushes outside packed with berries, and I fully equipped kitchen, I was ready to make pie until my supplies ran out. I was incredibly dismayed therefore when I realized that none of my paleo cookbooks had a straightforward blueberry pie recipe, and the internet let me down as well. Instead of trying to turn blueberry peach crumble into something resembling a pie, I decided to adapt a recipe my sister uses for her regular gluten free pie. The result was amazing (though I suspect now that I could have simply poured a pile of blueberries into a pie crust and my family still would have been satisfied).


Blueberry Pie
Servings: 8

Pie Crust
1 1/2 cups blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
2 tablespoons agave nectar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract


Pie Filling
5 cups fresh wild blueberries (a mix of wild, cultivated, and store bought works fine)
1/4 cup coconut sugar (more or less works fine, cut out completely for sugar free)
1/4 cup arrowroot starch
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 F
PIE CRUST:
In a large bowl, combine the almond flour, salt, and baking soda. In a medium bowl, whisk together the grapeseed oil, agave nectar, and vanilla extract. Stir the wet ingredients into the almond flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Press the dough into
a 9 1/2 inch or deep dish pie pan

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool before filling.

Note: When cooking the entire pie, the almond flour crust tends to burn very easily. Since it will be in the oven for over an hour total, I tend to cover the edges in tin foil. They still crisp to a dark brown, but don't blacken.


FILLING:
In a large bowl, mix blueberries, sugar, arrowroot, lemon juice, and salt. (I tend to mix the blueberries, sugar, arrowroot, and salt together first and then add the lemon, otherwise it clumps up quite a bit)

If you haven't already, make and bake the crust

Pour filling into prepared crust.

Bake pie in preheated oven for about 60 minutes.

Let cool on counter afterwards for at least 10 minutes, refrigeration before cutting is strongly advised if you want the filling to solidify.

Sources:
Pie crust is from "The Gluten Free Almond Flour Cookbook" by Elana
Amsterdam, pg. 79
Crust makes one 9 1/2 inch crust (can be stretched out to 10 1/2 inch and
scrunched down to 9 in)
Pie filling is adapted from a Living Without online recipe, June/July 2009.