Sublime Arctic Grasshopper Pie

It's  The Secret Recipe Club time again. How'd that happen?!  It has come back around again so quickly.  I am convinced time is speeding up!  As they say, 'my life already'!   Less 'manana', more 'eck, hurry up love', is called for.

Delving around the blog of this month's secret recipe buddy - enter Jamie from Our Eating Habits, I get the feeling, time isn't snapping at her heals in the kitchen.  If it did I think she'd beat it back with a wooden spoon.  Nothing is stopping this girl from having fun in the kitchen.

The SRC is good at keeping me from tunnel vision when it comes to food.  Being a vegan, I do tend to have my Internet homing pigeon set to 'plant-based recipes', but having a blog assigned by our hostess Angela, to poke around by someone else, I get to spy on recipes which probably wouldn't normally be in my sights.  For instance, I wouldn't put 'grasshopper' into a Google search box, unless I was researching natural history, or say, old cult classic karate films.  Definitely not in relation to food anywho.  Jamie has a zillion (well, an exaggeration..she's just a few shy of that) recipes on her food blog.  I saw Grasshopper Pie and I was curiosofied!  Not like some sicko, leering at something forbidden, more like the 7 year old tomboy in me spotted it next to 'Worms and Dirt' and got the whiff of fun in the air.  It had been raining for three and a half months straight in England, I needed all the fun I could gather!
The first viewing of the ingredients list alone were almost enough to put lil' ole Miss Purity Pants into a hyper blood- sugar rush!  After blowing into a brown paper bag to stave off hyperventilation, I threw on my red satin 'veganize' cape and spun into action.  I wanted whipped....minted....choccywokky...creamy.... and coooool!  A la Vegan.    Cupboards banged, scooping spoons were dirtied, the sink filled up with an assortment of bowls.  Coconut oil was eaten straight from a spoon (and rubbed onto elbows to nourish my sun-poor, winter skin)....and  VOILA!

Creamy Supreme Arctic Grasshopper Pie

Ok, it isn't green, more your 'albino' green, but it is really, really minty.  It smells like green. Tastes like green.  I'm guessing that is why they called it grasshopper pie in the 1950's, when those jive bopping Americans invented it.  Or was it because the Creme de Menthe had those crazy quiffed haired teenagers hopping all over the place?  My loves, we may never know.
What I do know is it has more Medium Chain Fatty acids (MCFA's) than you could shake a stick at!  Closest to that of mommy's milk = good for you.  Unlike saturated animal fats, MCFA's are not readily stored in the body but digested as used as human rocket fuel!

Jamie's original pudding/pie recipe is here.  Her recipe has crushed Oreo's in them.  I thinking Oreo's aren't gluten free, or very vegan.  But if you are not either then...  However, I made a lovely crumb that is just like crushed up cookies.  

                                                                                                                                                   Serves 4

Ingredients

Topping
1 can of full fat Coconut Milk refrigerated (unopened) overnight
2 Tbs xylitol sugar, ground in coffee grinder (or icing sugar if you haven't quit sugar...yet)
1 tsp peppermint extract

Base
6 dates, softened by soaking
1 tbs liquid vanilla (Asian shops sell BARONS liquid, san alcohol, vanilla), if not use water and vanilla powder
1/4 cup coconut flour (or soaked and drained pistachios or Brazil's) the coconut flour is high fibre, lower fat
pinch Himalayan or Celtic salt
1 tbs crushed pistachios
2 tbs carob or cacao powder
2 tbs coconut oil - gently melted

Drizzle
1 Tbs carob or cacao powder
2 Tbs coconut oil - gently melted
1/2 tsp peppermint oil
pinch salt

How to

1. for the base, put all ingredients into a blender and pulse until the crumbs hold together when pressed.  Tumble the crumb into a 8inch square dish that you've pre-greased with coconut oil.  Press down firmly.  Refrigerate or freeze while you prepare the other ingredients.
2. to make the 'cream' filling.  Open up the can of coconut milk, (do not shake or turn over the can) and gently scoop out the unquious white cream (leaving behind the clear coconut water. you can use this in other recipes) and decant into a mixing bowl.  Add the other 'filling' ingredients and whisk lightly.  Grab the chilled base out of the fridge or freezer and pour the minty cream over the top.  Pop into the freezer for 1 hour (minimum).

3. prepare the drizzle with the melted coconut oil, the carob, peppermint oil and salt.  Stir until smooth.
4. take the pie from the freezer and drizzle the carob sauce over the pie in a delightfully artful manner (or splosh it randomly like I did whilst muttering mild obscenities and your inefficacy at food decoration).  Don't take eons either else it will melt quicker than the polar ice caps.  House it back into the freezer for 30mins before serving. 

I would suggest eating this in company if your will power is poor to middling.  Solo consumption is advised with caution.

I also knocked up this 'pie in a jar'.   I layered filling and the base with chopped pistachio before crowning with mint carob confection.  If you've not tried carob then I suggest a little sampling is in order.  Carob is a naturally sweet, sticky legume that is the colour of chocolate, does have any stimulants in it, is low carb and low glycemic and has lots of vitamin D.  It does a rather brilliant job of mimicking chocolate flavour, but because of it's sweetness it needs little additional sweetener.  Good job, carob!

The cute glass spoon was 'glass blown' right in front of my eyes by an old dear physicist friend of mine.  I'd visited to take him to the supermarket but he convinced me to sit in his 'lab' in the kitchen and learn to blow glass instead.  Fun times.

Check out the other Secret Recipe Club's recipes shown.  I love 'reveal' day, when all our efforts are uploaded into cyberkitchen, and the anticipation of discovering just who was assigned to make one of my recipes and what they chose.

Thanks Jamie, I had such fun with the Grasshopper Pie.  Your blog has also inspired me to make corn chowder.  My next project, that I am thinking will be a chilled affair.  x 

sugar free, vegan, gluten free, low carb