Best gluten free nut crust with apricot filling

- May 16, 2017

The more I look for recipes for our gluten-free and keto (this is not a keto recipe by the way) style of eating the more I look to the past to find them. Garage sales and the recycling bin have given me a plethora of time-worn treasures that I can scrounge around in. I love these old cookbooks, paging through for recipes from the depression or earlier when a housewife would be cooking with only what was on hand and abundant. The recipes themselves tend not to be overly fancy. Good tasty food was all these homemakers were looking to make for their families. The ones that made it into church or group cookbooks were generally family or group favorites.

A tasty treat this crust is workable for those on keto or low carb. Unlike so many posts this recipe isn't a fad or diet bit that has been written up for looks not taste. Nope, it is just a recipe kept through the years just because its a tasty recipe. Long before people even heard or cared about gluten-free, keto or insert another diet. Flour was an expense and if you had nut trees there would be an abundance of the little treasures to use. Nuts should be ground to a small crumb. From experience, if the nuts are left too large the crust won't hold together. A food processor does the job just fine but, be careful not to make the nuts into a nut butter. So fine ground not paste. This recipe lists pecans or walnuts to be used for the crust. I prefer the pecans but any nut can be used. Black walnuts would be overpowering with this recipe so English would be a better choice. If you prefer almonds I am sure they would be great too. DO NOT use salted nuts. This is a sweet recipe and salted nuts would throw off the taste.

This recipe also uses dried fruit reconstituted to make a wet filling. Not everyone canned foods and excess fruit were often dried to be kept for uses later on well after their harvest. There is an amazing amount of dried fruits that could be used with this recipe. Nowadays we can get our hands on dried fruits from all over the world giving us a million or more options of single or mixed fruits.

Mixed berry mixes, harvest mixes or even tropical would be yummy. Due to the use of gelatin, the filling can be made lower carb by replacing the sugar with no carb sweetener such as monk fruit or stevia.