Who doesn’t love a deliciously lemon tangy pie on a lazy Sunday afternoon? I know I do.

Most pies that I have come across lately contain gelatine in and  gelatine is a no go on my vegan ingredient list, so is agar agar powder. Well mainly agar powder, because I still have to get the feel of working with the powder.

I was searching the “Loving it Vegan,” website, when I came across a recipe for an easy lemon pie with a ginger biscuit crust. I love ginger biscuit crusts, they are so easy to make and there is always a packet of ginger biscuits hiding out in the cupboard for emergencies lol.

Of course being me, I just read the word condense milk and I assumed I could use the store bought one, but when Sunday came around and I got to prepping for the pie I discovered that I would have to make my own condense milk as the recipe asked for a batch of the stuff and not a tin, how much is a batch? No getting around that option, but all in all, making vegan condense milk from scratch is so easy and to tell you the truth it actually tastes better than the store bought version.

Ingredients for the base:

• 225g x ginger cookies.
• 60g x melted margarine.

Method:

• In a food process, blitz the biscuits till they resemble cookie crumbs.
• Drizzle in the melted margarine and pulse until the mixture starts coming together.
• Line a greased 20cm pie dish with the mixture, pop into the freezer while you make the filling.

Ingredients for the condense milk:

• 1 ¼ x cup milk powder.
• ¾ x cup castor sugar.
• ½ x hot water.
• 30g x coconut oil.
• ¼ x tsp salt.

Method for the condense  milk:

• In your mixing bowl, mix the milk powder and salt.
• In another bowl, mix the water, coconut oil and salt together.
• Pour this into the milk powder mixture and mix until well combined.

Ingredients for the pie filling:

• A batch of condense milk.
• ½ x cup lemon juice.
• Zest of 1 lemon.
• ¼ x tsp lemon essence.
• 250ml of whipped cream.

Method:

• In your mixing bowl, mix the condense milk, lemon juice and lemon essence until the mixture starts to thicken.
• Fold in the lemon zest.
• Whisk in the whipped cream.
• Pour the pie filling into the pie crust.
• Garnish with grated lemon zest.
• Pop into the fridge to set over night.