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As we approach the holiday season, I thought I'd share a baking tip that was shared with me a while back that has been invaluable to me. I was told of a great way to make crustless GF pies. You can use basically any regular pie recipe, skipping the crust making, and just add 1/4 cup of GF flour to the batter. This addition makes a crustless pie. No xanthan or guar gum is needed. You do have to ensure the ingredients are GF and make substitutions if necessary. If the recipe already calls for some flour, you would substitute GF flour for it AND you would still add another 1/4 cup of GF flour to turn the pie into a crustless one. I have used this method with pumpkin, coconut, etc. and all have been great. People usually never even notice the pies are crustless until you point it out. Celiacs and non-celiacs all love my crustless pies.

Note: My GF flour mix is 3 parts white rice flour (purchased from an Asian grocery store--it's ground finer) and 2 parts cornstarch. The white rice flour from the Asian store I frequent comes in 3 lb packages so I use one of those and two boxes (1 lb each) of the cornstarch. I realize this mix is not as nutritious as some of the other flour mixes, but I have issues with the various ingredients in those and find this blend easy to mix and keep on hand, easy on my stomach, and also relatively inexpensive. This mix also makes my "old" recipes still usable. I just add xanthan gum when baking cookies, cakes, or sweet breads--1/2 tsp per cup of flour mix.

Happy baking!
Shirley in VA

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