Applesauce Pie

A few weeks ago, I had no idea what was for lunch, and it was already lunch time!  I was in the mood for something different, and I thought of apple pie.  But, to make a whole apple pie and then bake it would not work for eating at lunch.  I tried a recipe I just thought up while we were making it, using things from the fridge, cabinets and fruit basket.  It turned out too sweet.  But we enjoyed it nonetheless.  I would definitely make this again, but it would have to be about half as sweet for me. 

First assemble three crazy helpers

First, we started with the crust.  This is where most of the over-sweetness was.  I will have to think of something other than dates to hold this crust together.  Or maybe see if less dates would work.  We used 1 cup of nuts, about 3/4 cup of dates, about a tablespoon of coconut oil and 1/2 cup of oats for the crust.  Just whiz it up in the food processor. 

Make sure to cover your ears while the food processor is on!

Next for the filling, we cut up three apples (I would do four or five next time!) and chopped them in the food processor also.  Then I added 2 TBS chia seeds, 1/2 cup of water and about 1 cup applesauce to a bowl and let it sit for a bit.  When you put chia seeds in water they kind of make a gel, which is what I was going for.  This is where the other extra sweetness came in-- we had sweetened applesauce that someone had given us leftover from Thanksgiving.  I put the apples into the pie crust and then the applesauce mix, but next time I would stir them all together before dumping it in the crust. 

The chia seed mixture

Finally, we let it chill in the refrigerator until it was time to eat.

As I said before, this was good, but it was too sweet.  I would try this again with less dates in the crust (and more nuts to replace them) and unsweetened applesauce. 

I am really interested in using chia seeds as a thickener, especially to make pudding like foods.  I hope to have more experimenting on this soon!

Crust:
1/2 cup dates
1- 1 1/2 cups nuts
3/4 cups oats
1 TBS coconut oil

blend together in the food processor.  press into pie pan.

Filling:
4-5 apples chopped in food processor
1+ tsp cinnamon
1 cup applesauce
2 TBS chia seeds
1/2 cup water

mix all ingredients in a bowl. dump into pie crust.  let the pie set up and/or chill before you eat it.  mmmm. 

ps.  now that I'm looking at this last picture it could really use some crumbly oat topping!