Excuse me if I toot my own horn a little bit here, because I am pretty excited about this one. After much experimenting, I have managed to create a low carb, gluten-free pastry crust that holds together and yet still manages to be tender and flaky. With no eggs. Not one single egg, not even half an egg. Not even a few drops of egg white. While I have nothing against eggs in general, this is actually a huge breakthrough for me. If you have ever worked with low carb, gluten-free ingredients, I think you will agree that this is no mean feat. Because when it comes to pastry crust, the lack of gluten presents an enormous challenge. Gluten may not be good for us, but it has some amazing properties that are really hard to simulate in its absence. It provides the glue that holds conventional pastry crust together while still allowing it to be tender. My beloved almond flour isn’t nearly so cooperative in that regard. It doesn’t have all these magical little protein strands that bind to each other while the butter melts, so most almond flour pastry recipes call for eggs to hold the crust together. Until now…
Again, I have nothing against eggs in general. In fact, I love them and eat them almost daily in some form or another. But eggs don’t belong in a true pastry crust. Sorry, eggs, you are delicious, but you have a tendency to make the crust very heavy and decidedly un-flaky. Eggs or egg whites may help hold the crust together, but it will be much more leaden in texture. It definitely won’t have that melt-in-your-mouth tenderness.
In the absence of gluten and eggs, I knew I needed some help getting the almond flour to hold together. I would love to have an all almond flour crust, but I tried that a few times and the results weren’t pretty. So I went with a little teeny weeny bit of starch, in the form of some gluten-free all purpose flour. I used as little as I could get away with, so as not to raise the carb count too much.
I was very pleased with the results. The dough is still quite fragile and has to be handled with care. But one great thing about the absence of gluten is that the dough patches back together really easily and can be re-rolled without the loss of too much tenderness. It worked so well for these hand pies, because the circles of pastry were small and easy to work with. I also made a few of them into tarts and was impressed with how well the dough baked up, without getting too soggy on the bottom. And I have also tried it out as one large pre-baked crust (for a coconut cream pie, and I will post that recipe in a few days). Because it’s so fragile, it’s tricky getting it into the pie pan without a lot of cracks and tears, but again, it patches back together so nicely.
I have a few ideas of how to strengthen it without losing the tenderness, so I think there may still be some tweaking to be done. And I haven’t yet tried it as a top crust for a large pie, so I can’t quite say how it will perform there. But for now, I am extremely pleased to have a delicious low carb almond flour pastry crust. I have so many recipe ideas for this crust, I hardly know where to begin!
Strawberry Hand Pies – Low Carb and Gluten-Free
Ingredients
Filling:
- 1 cup strawberries, finely chopped
- 2 tbsp Swerve Sweetener or granulated erythritol
Crust:
- 1 cup almond flour, Honeyville
- 1/4 cup Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour, I used Bob's Red Mill
- 2 tbsp Swerve Sweetener or granulated erythritol
- 1 tsp guar or xanthan gum
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup butter, well-chilled and cut into small chunks
- 2 - 4 tbsp ice water
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- For the filling, combine chopped berries and erythritol in a small bowl and let sit.
- For the crust, combine almond flour, all purpose, erythritol, guar gum and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to combine.
- Sprinkle butter over and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
- With processor running on low, add ice water 1 tbsp at a time until dough begins to clump together.
- Cover work surface with a large sheet of parchment paper and sprinkle with almond flour. Turn out dough and form into a disk.
- Sprinkle with additional almond flour and top with another piece of parchment, then carefully roll out in all directions to form a 10 inch circle.
- Remove top parchment and use a large circular cookie cutter, about 2 3/4 inches in diameter, to cut out as many circles as possible. Gently lift circles with a knife or offset spatula and transfer to prepared baking sheet.
- Re-roll scraps to get as many pastry circles as possible. You should be able to get 9 or 10.
- Avoiding any juices collected at the bottom, spoon a small amount of berries onto one half of each circle, leaving 1/2 inch edge for sealing.
- Gently fold the other half of the pastry over and seal edges. Use a fork to crimp.
- Use a sharp knife to cut small slices into the top of each hand pie to release steam.
- Bake 16 to 18 minutes or until pastry is light golden brown. Let cool completely on pan before serving.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional Disclaimer
Please note that I am not a medical or nutritional professional. I am simply recounting and sharing my own experiences on this blog. Nothing I express here should be taken as medical advice and you should consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. I provide nutritional information for my recipes simply as a courtesy to my readers. It is calculated using MacGourmet software and I remove erythritol from the final carb count and net carb count, as it does not affect my own blood glucose levels. I do my best to be as accurate as possible but you should independently calculate nutritional information on your own before relying on them. I expressly disclaim any and all liability of any kind with respect to any act or omission wholly or in part in reliance on anything contained in this website.
Free Bonus: Secrets to Keto Baking!
Sign up for your favorite recipes delivered straight to your inbox plus get our FREE bonus: Secrets to Keto Baking!
The Best keto hand pie recipe I found! I make blueberries ones Too!
Interesting recipe, thank you. Just wondering if you have done more investigation on this recipe as you mentioned in your notes. Hmm, do you think the tiniest bit of gelatin would work?
can this recipe be modified to include rhubarb? if so, ×what would the measurements be?
I think it could but I can’t guide you as to measurements since I didn’t make mine that way.
Hello, Carolyn! I LOVE your recipes and truly appreciate all the work that goes into every one of them! Thank you very much.
I have a question about a possible substitute with this recipe: Can I substitute coconut flour for the 1/4 cup Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour? I am wondering if this swap would hinder the texture of the crust? I appreciate your attention to this inquiry. God bless!
You should be able to but the dough isn’t quite as sturdy or flexible. Use only 2 tbsp coconut flour.
Hi!
I’m not gluten free and I just wondered if anyone has tried making a regular pastry recipe with vital wheat gluten flour?
I’d love to know before I try it.
Cheers
Is the sweetener in the dough a crucial element for this dough’s structure?
As I made a savory version of these yesterday with a meat filing, and granulated sugar in the dough, instead of the sweetener you used, but I was afraid to leave he sugar out, as I wasn’t sure if it served a role in keeping the dough together, so my dough came out with an unmistakable sweet taste, paired with my curried meat filling it was a little odd, but the texture of these was great, albeit very fragile even after being baked. Do you think these would freeze & defrost well with a drier type meat filling? thank you
No, I don’t think the sweetener is critical to the outcome so you can leave it out. Dough is definitely fragile! Not sure how it would stand up to freezing and then baking.
I want to make these for my father’s bday with mincemeat. Can you sub the sweetener in this recipe for the dough and use regular sugar or date sugar instead and it work out? I have never used these sweetners before and prefer more natural ones. Thanks!
I am sure it would work.
Hey Carolyn, I’m taking time out of our July Fourth festivities to tell you how awesome this crust is and to thank you again for coming up with it. Have you seen those cute berry pies with the stars over the blueberry portion and stripes over the raspberry portion? I thought I’d use your crust recipe to make a lower carb version of that pie. I used a bit of glucomanan and xantham in the berries to firm up the filling and I doubled your crust recipe and cut stars and stripes out of the crust for the top of the pie. It tasted exactly like delicious, high carb pie crust and held together beautifully. Thank you! My entire family, with all their different health issue, loved it! This is a brilliant recipe.
What a wonderful idea! Did you happen to get any photos? I would LOVE to share it.
I did take one quick photo on my phone. It’s not the prettiest pie (I was in a rush and some of the raspberry juice seeped out on the sides and I didn’t take the time to clean it up and the waves on my stripes were off) but I could email it to you. I definitely plan on doing it again and taking my time and making it pretty. Either way, it was quite delicious and the crust was spectacular. Two days later, the tiny bit we have left is still great and the crust isn’t soggy a bit. Honestly, all my family agreed it was an amazing crust.
If you make it again, feel free to send some photos my way!
I’m so glad I saw Melanie’s comment about using this dough in a pie. I recently was inspired by my daughter who made a beautiful berry and ricotta galette using a recipe from smittenkitchen.com. I kept wondering if there was a dough I might use instead of the full wheat flour in that recipe. Seeing Melanie had some success, I gave it a try and it worked pretty well and looked rustically beautiful! I also doubled the recipe and added xantham gum to the fruit filling. I kept it on the same parchment from rolling to baking and the paper was it’s support through all the folding and manipulating when it came time to fold up the sides. Started to crack a bit near the end of baking time, but it tastes wonderful! Finally I can eat pie AND the crust again!
So glad you liked it!
Just made these little cuties. Used blueberries. Exactly 3 blueberries fit I to each pie, and as I was making them I was wondering “how good can these be with 3 berries inside”?
Well they are excellent….so good. Warm blueberry pie right out of the oven. To. Die. For. I ate 6. Real problem here.
But my recipe made 15 pies and I have 1/3 of the filling left over.
Thank you again Carolyn- over the top this time.
Do you think Carbalose flour would work in these or would it be to heavy? I also have another low carb all purpose flour, but haven’t been pleased with the results.
I really don’t know, I haven’t tested it. I don’t like carbalose very much.
Hello! I am so very eager to try this recipe, but is there any way I could swap out the GF flour for coconut flour? My family and I eat on the Ketogenic Diet and the GF all-purpose flour is a way too high in the carb count.
You need some sort of starch to get the pastry to hold together. I now typically use 2 tbsp coconut flour and 2 tbsp arrowroot starch in place of the GF flour.
Do you think if I didn’t put the sweetener in the crust I could use it for samosas?
Possibly! But do you intend to fry them like samosas? Not sure that they would hold together.
No, I liked the idea of baking them. If I did want to try to fry them, I would probably try freezing one first to see if it would hold up. I noticed your pastry on the apple caramelized onion tartlets has less sweetener, do you think that one would be better to try making samosas?
I don’t have GF flour and really don’t want to have to buy any. Could I use regular all-purpose flour and maybe leave out the xanthan gum? How much do you think it would change the amount of carbs in each serving?
A 1/4 cup of flour has about 28 g of carbs. Divide that by 7 or 8 servings. So at least 3 more grams per serving, I would say.