Parenthetical

…and am somewhat sorry.

One of my Summer Projects is to get a handle on vegan and/or gluten-free baking. (Yes, I realize that summer in Boston is perhaps not the ideal time to turn on the oven ever, let alone on a weekly basis, but this is when I have free time. Insert inappropriate joke about naked cooking here.)

Anyway, this afternoon I made a half-batch of the Almond Pie Crust from Jennifer Katzinger’s Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free & Vegan Baking Book. The fat she calls for is palm oil. I raised my eyebrows at this, because I know palm oil — I didn’t eat a damn thing cooked without the stuff for the entire month I spent in Ghana. It’s tasty, but the flavor is distinctive and overpowering, and it turns everything bright orange.

But fortunately I brought a bottle home with me from Ghana (how many people can say they’re cooking with local palm oil in New England?), and I was determined to resist my usual recipe-flouting instincts, because how else will I learn?

The resulting “dough,” made with mostly brown rice flour and some almond meal, was super-soft, more like batter. I added some sorghum flour (I’d run out of rice flour) until it was workable. I pressed it into two mini-tart tins and then decided to freeze them for 15 minutes while the oven preheated even though the recipe didn’t call for it. I was worried they’d melt before cooking if I put them in the oven as soft as they were, but palm oil firms up very quickly in the cold.

I pre-baked the empty shells on the lowest rack at 375 until the tops were fairly dark, then added strawberry pieces, which I’d mixed with sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, and cornstarch. Back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so.

The verdict: The texture is pleasantly light and crumbly, though sturdy enough to hold its shape coming out of the tart mold. It wouldn’t roll, so it wouldn’t do for a double-crust pie or galette. The tartness of the strawberries sort of works with the earthy sweetness of the palm oil. But the whole thing sure is bright orange and palm-y! Next time I’ll try it with Earth Balance fake butter. Maybe the dough would even be rollable if I used a hardened fat rather than a liquid oil.