Product: Moon Rabbit Foods Pastry & Pie Crust Mix – $8.79+
So, for awhile now, I’ve been wanting to revamp another one of my mom’s famous recipes. Making it not only gluten-free, but also vegetarian. Oh…and dairy free too…but that’s pretty much a given when it comes to me, right? The actual dish is her delicious Cheeseburger Pie. Normally, the crust of this amazing meal is made from crescent rolls from the grocery store fridge area zone. You know, that place I hardly visit these days.
Sadness.
But…then I got to thinking…what if I cooked up a pie crust and used that instead. Sure, it wouldn’t be the flaky crescent roll shell that this meal was known for, but I was already going to get rid of the whole meat thing (using a meat substitute) and use Daiya cheese for the cheese. So…why not give a different sort of crust a try?
The problem is…pie crusts and I have never really gotten along. We are anything but BFFs. Then…lo and behold…the Thanksgiving (November 2014) Cuisine Cube arrived in the mail. And inside was Moon Rabbit Foods Pastry & Pie Crust Mix. Everything in the November Cuisine Cube could have been used for Thanksgiving itself…but I wasn’t allowed to host this year so most of it was used at my own discretion. Well, the final product is up now…but first…
Cuisine Cube is run by a small group of foodies who have put together a completely gluten-free box of goodies and then sends them to your doorstep each month. These boxes contain 5-6 full-size products from small, lesser-known artisan producers…mostly local…some not as local. Some you may even have heard of before, but most will be new to you. I signed up for Cuisine Cube back in May and have never looked back. Subscriptions start as low as $29.99…which is a great price and great incentive to sign up for this subscription box service and try out some gluten-free products you have been too nervous about purchasing yourself or, perhaps, didn’t even know existed.
Such as Moon Rabbit Foods. Never head of this brand before in my life. Moon Rabbit Foods follows a philosophy of choosing the finest ingredients and using the latest techniques of the craft of baking to give those living a gluten free lifestyle (like me!) a rare opportunity to enjoy delicious refined pastries and baked goods. Their baking and pastry blends provide a source for hard-to-find gluten-free products, allowing customers to enjoy that high quality at home, and even allowing them to add their own inspirational touches. So, here, in my clutches was a pie crust mix. I had no reason to make a pie. No one ever wants desserts at the family dinners. I usually do because I never really get to eat much of what is offered (part of why I love to host). But, I also hate being the only person to eat dessert, especially when I’m the one providing it. So, instead of going sweet, I opted to go savory and attempt to recreate a gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian version of my mom’s Cheeseburger Pie recipe.
Cross your fingers…
This mix makes 3 9-inch pie crusts. I went ahead and cooked them all up because…well…I could freeze the rest of them instead of just letting the mix sit and having to haul out all the equipment (a food processor, really) and ingredients (only 3) to do whenever I felt the need to make a pie. Because if I did that, it would only get used this one time. Therefore…all or nothing. So, I took 1 cup of the pie mix and mixed it with one stick (4 ounces) of butter (or vegan butter) and pulsed it until it looked like cornmeal. Then, in went 3 tablespoons of cold water and I ran the food processor until it all came together. I formed the dough into a 6-7 inch disk and then put it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Then I rolled it out and fit it into a pie pan. It fell apart at some points because pie crusts hate me, but I managed to get it into the pie pans and into a 350°F oven for 30 minutes. Out come the par baked crusts…and there you have it. Use it as you will.
For the rest of the recipe, I used NEAT original mix and prepared the recipe from my mom’s cookbook as it would have been prepared regularly. YAY! That recipe will go in the review for NEAT. So stick with me here. Let’s talk about how the pie crusts cooked up and the rest of that important stuff.
First of all, I think I sort of expected them to be a little more golden. They cooked, but they were still a pale white color. I poked it to make sure it wasn’t still dough. Then I figured it would get more golden as it cooked with my filling of Neat, tomato paste, onion, and vegan cheese…but it still remained a pale shade of…pale. It was cooked…it just didn’t look that way. It was a bit disconcerting. It tasted good though, so I guess that’s the important thing. It may look underdone, but it is quite a good pie shell. I was actually happy to have a pie crust that didn’t incorporate sugar into the mix as I was using it for a savory dish. This made this a great substitute for the refrigerated croissant rolls that used to make this light, flaky crust for this dish. Being a thinner crust also helped as well. So, once again, looks can be a wee bit deceiving. It’s all in the taste, when it all comes down to it.
So, what exactly is in the Moon Rabbit Foods Pastry & Pie Crust Mix? According to the package, this mix is made up of potato starch, cassava flour, rice flour, sea salt, unrefined cane sugar, and xanthan gum. That’s it. Small list and all recognizable ingredients makes me a happy girl. This crust is gluten-free and vegan. It is also cholesterol free and fat-free until you add the butter…
As for nutrition, the Moon Rabbit Foods Pastry & Pie Crust Mix has around 24 2 tablespoon servings in the package. A serving will provide 60 calories, 115 mg sodium, 16 grams carbohydrates, 1 gram fiber and no sugar or protein. No sugar or protein is added to the mix so…it remains that way in the end. When it’s prepared, all of this changes depending on your ingredients and the like.
If you need an easy pie crust, I highly recommend Moon Rabbit Foods Pastry & Pie Crust. Yet another product I never would have even know existed (and, hence, never would have made my mom’s Cheeseburger Pie (albeit vegetarian and dairy free)) if not for Cuisine Cube. Loving this service and the new products and companies that it introduces to me.
The Celiathlete 