Vegan No Bake Blackberry Cream Pie

One of my other hobbies (besides slaving away to my baser desires in the kitchen) is knitting. I knit a lot. And with knitting comes Open Knit Night, which is every Wednesday. One of the things I love about knitting night besides the camaraderies and (obviously) knitting is the wine and food and talking that everyone shares together. Often we find ourselves wandering to the local Brown Cow Ice Cream Parlor which has homemade creations ready to be devoured.

Despite my love of Brown Cow, I still love to share homemade goodies. One week it was sugar cookies that looked like yarn balls. The next time it was my vegan chocolate cupcakes with the experimental icing. This time it's going to be a no-bake pie. Well, almost no bake.

My recipe inspiration actually came from a Better Homes and Gardens email that was filled with summer recipes. They had this one here, for Black Raspberry Pie. However, It clearly needed to be altered. When feeding my friend baked goods I've learned to think "vegan", and then of course like me he also has to be gluten-free and corn-free. So I went about thinking of what I could do.

Whipped cream substitutes are a no go because they all seem to contain corn. Or a minute amount of dairy. Or at least the ones available by me do. If you know of a better one, I'd love to hear about it.

So anyway, the cream cheese portion was covered. I changed the whipped cream to vegan sour cream to make it a little less dense and used Blackberry Jam instead of Black Raspberry or some such thing.

The pie crust itself was a bit of a challenge. . . Initially I was going to make a "graham cracker" type of crust out of gluten-free vegan cookies. . . Until I realized the ones I had selected had almonds in them. D'oh. Can't use almonds.

Luckily for me, I had just bought Fabe's Gluten-Free Vegan Macaroons. One box was supposed to be for me and one box was supposed to be for knitting for everyone to eat and enjoy. Macaroons are always popular.

Inspired by the presence of these squishy cookies, I decided to try and press them into my pie dish to see if I could form them into a crust of sorts. Sure enough, they smoothed right together to form a crust. I then coated the inside of the crust with agave nectar and baked it for 10 minutes at 350 F just to firm it up a bit.

Recipe As Follows:

Jam-of-Your-Choice Vegan Cream Pie with Vegan/Gluten-Free Macaroon Crust

1 9 inch pie dish (you can make smaller pies if you choose, which might make the crust cost less)
2 Packages Fabe's Mini Macaroons
Agave Nectar
1 10 oz jar of your favorite jam or jelly
1 8oz container of Vegan Cream Cheese
1/2 cup Vegan Sour Cream
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350. Smash macaroon cookies into bottom of pie plate evenly and then up the sides. Lightly coat the inside of the pie shell with agave nectar (use a basting brush). Place in oven and bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly browned. The crust will still be slightly soft when you take it out of the oven, so let it cool while you prepare the rest.

In a large mixing bowl, whip the 8 oz of cream cheese with the 1/2 tsp of cream of tartar on high. Add the 1/2 cup of vegan sour cream slowly and continue to whip on high. When combined, add the 10 oz jar of jam (I choose blackberry) and mix on low until evenly distributed. Slowly pour into pie crust and let set for 10 minutes.

Cover pie (carefully) and freeze overnight. Slice into even portions while frozen and top with fresh berries (to go with jam of your choice). Garnish with lemon zest or mint or anything else suitable. Enjoy!