SUGAR-FREE CREAM CHEESE PIE

We had friends over for dinner last night, and I made a great dessert. This sugar-free, low carb recipe is one of the best I've developed and I'm pretty proud of it. The guests each had two pieces and they aren't low carbers. That tells you how good it tastes. it also has several variations. last night I made the lemon cream cheese with blueberry topping. The Key lime is also excellent!

Lemon Cream Cheese Pie with berry topping
*notes on the weird ingredients at the end of the post!

1 1/2 cup heavy cream
4 egg yolks
8 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup lemon juice
18 drops sweetzfree liquid splenda ( or 18 packets)
1/4 cup xylitol
1 1/2 teasp unflavored gelatin ( do not use a full envelope--always measure. The envelopes are notoriously inconsistent in amount. You don't want a " bouncy" pie LOL)

First, sprinkle the gelatin over 1/4 cup of water in a small bowl and let soften for about 5 min while you cook the cream. Separate the egg yolks into a bowl, whisk well and set aside. Put cream cheese into a bowl and allow to soften ( I usually use the micro to soften it) set aside.

Into a heavy saucepan, measure the cream and the sweeteners and heat to just under boiling. slowly add about half the cream to the eggs yolks, whisking carefully and then add yolks back to saucepan and return to heat , stirring constantly, till mixture thickens (this usually takes about 30 seconds! you'll see steam just starting to rise from the mixture and you know you're done--you don't want this to boil--you just want to heat the yolks to kill any bad bugs)

Remove cream/yolk mixture from heat and add the softened gelatin and stir til well combined--a minute or so.

add this mixture to the cream cheese --a little at a time-- then stir in the lemon juice. chill for awhile stirring occasioanlly until themixture is cool and starts to thicken before pouring into the crust. Chill pie for several hours. cover with blueberry topping and serve!

Blueberry topping
2 cups blueberries
1/4 cup water
sweetener to taste ( I use 1/4 cup xylitol and 6 drops Sweetzfree)
2 tablespoons Thicknthin Not Sugar* or 1 tsp gelatin softened as above in 2 T of cold water.
boil the berries water and sweetener for a couple of minutes till the berries are popped. Off the heat , stir in the thickener well then chill till ready to serve the pie.

Key Lime variation:
Use 1/2 cup lime juice ( I never have real key limes, though go for it it you can find them)and the zest of two limes ( maybe a tablespoon?) in place of the lemon juice. Top with whipped cream. that's it Amaze your friends!

Fabulous "crumb" pie crust:

1 1/2 cup almond flour
5 T butter, melted
2 T oat flour
1/4 cup polydextrose(optional but really helps the texture.)
2 T xylitol
5 drops Sweetzfree zero carb liquid sucrolose sweetener added to the butter ( or 5 packets splenda)

I put everything into a food processor and pulse it a couple times, but a fork works too! press mixture evenly into and up the sides of a 9" pie pan.

bake10 min at 350, then brush with a bit of slightly beaten egg white. put back in oven for 5 min or so to dry egg white glaze. ( this helps prevent the filling from soaking into the crust--can be an issue with nut crusts.)

*where to get the ingredients
I get my almond flour and xylitol at my local health food store but you can get them and everything else here (except the liquid sweetener) from netrition.com a wonderful on line store --with a flat shopping rate of $4.95 no matter how much you order.

the Sweetener I get here: http://www.sweetzfree.com/ I know it seems really spendy but 4 ounces lasts me 6 months and I use it in everything. 1/4 tsp equals 1 cup of sugar, it has zero carbs and IMHO zero aftertaste.
I highly recommend it.