Friday 27 April 2007

the Ugly Pie and the no sugar debate




MY EXTRAORDINARY UGLY PIE!
Ugly Pie Is an wholemeal apple pie and it’s completely sugarless and vegan!
It is a recipe adapted from the famous Candle Cafe’ cookbook:

1 cup brown flour
1 cup light brown flour (waitrose)
1 teaspoon round cinnamon
1 pinch of sea salt
1/3 of a cup of cold safflower oil
1/3 cup ice water

4 cups lovely British apple gala
3 tbsp corn malt
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp light brown flour
1 tbsp cinnamon
½ tbsp round nutmeg
2 tbsp poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 180 C°

Mix flour cinnamon and salt in a bowl, add the oil and mix. Add the cold water while mixing continuously till you have firm dough. Roll the dough into a bowl and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Form two balls with the dough, roll one into a circle and press it into a pie pan (the layer has to be around 0,5 cm thick) trim but leave 1 cm all around.
In a large bowl mix apple, malt, lemon juice, spices and flour, add this filling to the pie shell. Roll the second ball so you cover the pie and crimp the edges.
Cut some slits on the crust, mine looked more like scars ☺
Bake for 1 ½ hour

I wanted to take this to the office but there is an American girl and I don’t think she’d appreciate a pie that is not proper, but believe me it was a very good one!

Sometimes people ask me why I gave up sugar and what can I eat as a “treat” I find difficult not to try to convince them about trying. You should never tell the people what to eat, it Is an annoying boring conversation and it’s not going to lead anywhere ☺
I just think that sugar is not a natural thing to eat. Refined sugar is indeed refined, therefore not natural. Every sort of nutrients is lost and it is very much a poison. In the UK it is very hard to eat out or buy something at the supermarket that doesn’t contain sugar: breakfast cereal, sauces and dips, bread etc. The result of me eating sugar is tragic, I have no energy by the end of the day and I just want to seat on the sofa and have more sweets!
Since December I try to avoid every type of refined sugar and honey and still manage to have quite a lot of yummy things! I am full of energy the whole day and this is such a great improvement :)

2 comments:

Kati said...

This looks delicious! I don't eat sugar, either. It's very difficult to find anything here in the States without it, too, so you're not alone. Have you read Sugar Blues by William Dufty?

This may be a dumb American question, but what is brown flour? Is that like whole wheat flour?

roberta said...

I call brown flour tthe whole weat, but don't worry I am Italian and I write in English, so it's not you, I can make mistakes sometimes :)
I will put Sugar Blues in my luggage for the weekend, and I will let you know, I read bits of it.
I think even very healty types of cuisine include sugar, did you know that Mirin (japanese seasoning) is full of it?