I’ve always been a detailed oriented person, which I believe, is why I like art in small forms. When I use to do more sketching/still lives/paintings, I thrived on a small canvas – not a large. WIth cooking, I’m finding I work the same way. Cupcakes, great, Cakes, not so great. Today when I attempted a lime/orange pie in a full sized torte pan, I found my self in a familiar position… overwhelmed with the large size. However, I was without miniature torte pans here at home (visiting rents in Jeff), so I just sucked it up and made do.
Now, with that ‘this may look like crap” disclosure: I’ll continue on with the rest of my post….
It took me until I was 26 to really enjoy coming home. Up until now, I would visit home on major holiday’s and keep it at that… as I just always enjoyed my ‘freedom’. This summer/spring however, has been a different story (primarily due to scheduling), coming home almost every other weekend. Most of my enjoyment just has to do with maturity and growing up, but some of it also has to do with the nice amenities my parents house has to offer – making me seriously disagree with B.I.G., when he wrote ‘mo money, mo problems’, Sorry, but I believe he meant to write ‘mo money, mo stuff, mo happiness’. I’m not going to lie, having a room that rivals the size of my whole condo, a kitchen that isn’t the size of a shoe box, and a private pool I can float in all day, is quite nice… if you’re already happy, it can’t hurt 
I’d also like to mention that for someone getting into food photography (like myself), my mothers ample supply of serving ware, is like still-life heaven… I counted 22 sets of drinking classes (this doesn’t include casual ware), 3-4 sets of china, maybe 5 sets of daily dishes and let’s not even start on large serving pieces… as the thought itself, is almost a little too overwhelming. But none the less, If I lived at home, I’d have some bitch’n photographs (don’t worry mom and dad, I don’t like home that much…).
So any who, while I was home this weekend, I wanted to make mom a raw version of her most loved, key lime pie. However, I didn’t want to use your basic run of the mill ‘raw key lime pie’ recipe. So instead, I came up with a part lime, part orange pie with a chocolate crust – inspired by the shelves of the grocery store (ha, easily inspired I guess?). I noticed, that you can always buy lime chocolates or orange chocolates, but never lime/orange chocolates. If you think about it, Lime and orange go great together and chocolate obviously goes well with everything, so all three must be great together, right!? Right.
You’ll want to serve this pie fresh out of the freezer. If you can see in the image, it melts quickly in the hot heat (still taste good), but just more refreshing the colder it is.
Now for the recipe:
Raw Orange – Lime Pie with Chocolate Crust
Crust:
3 C almonds
1 T almond butter (or sub. natural peanut butter)
3 T agave
4 dates (pitted)
2 T cocao (or sub. cocoa)
sea salt to taste
Mill almonds to fine powder. In food processor, add remaining ingredients and process till fine in texture.
In a lightly greased torte pan, press mixture into pan – Like I stated above, this was my first time using a torte pan, so I used a combination of my fingers and a spatula to get the job done – results were questionable, ha. After pressing, place pan in fridge (if I were at home – and had the time – I’d probably dehydrate this crust to dry it out a bit – then proceed with the filling).
Filling:
- 3 avocados
- 3 T coconut oil
- 3 T agave
- 2 T lime juice
- 2 T orange juice
- 1 tsp lime zest (packed)
- 2 tsp orange zest (packed)
- dash of stevia (optional)
Place all ingredients in a food processor and process to light and fluffy. Spread mixture in chilled crust and place in freezer till set (few hours).
Once chilled, slice and grate orange zest on top – for extra prettiness.
Now – get a fork and enjoy!
