Strawberry pie is a delicious dessert, but it can be hard to enjoy if you're thinking of the calories in every spoonful of pastry and creamy filling. Unfortunately the fruit component isn't enough to keep the calories down, but thankfully, there are a few tricks you can employ to make your own, low-cal version that still tastes great.
About Regular Strawberry Pie
Before you can work out how many calories you're saving by making a 'healthy' strawberry pie, you need to know what's in the regular, high-cal version. Betty Crocker's recipe for Fresh Strawberry Pie, for example, contains 320 calories per slice, says the Betty Crocker website. Most of these calories are likely to come from the shortening in the pastry and the cream cheese in the filling. This is a lot less than the Betty Crocker recipe for light pecan pie, at 470 calories per slice, but still more than a serving of tapioca pudding, which comes in at around 110 calories, says the Diet Bites website.
Low-calorie Pastry
Pastry is high in fat and calories due to the butter and sugar used to make it, but it's relatively easy to cut the calories without sacrificing taste. Try using low-fat butter or margarine to substitute for half of the ricotta cheese, says the Diet & Fitness Today website. If you're really serious about conserving the calories, brush your filo or half-ricotta pastry with low-fat milk or yogurt, or use a low-fat spray oil, rather than egg or butter.
Ready-made Pastry Alternatives
If you're too busy to make your own low-calorie pastry, there are ready-made options that are virtually fat and calorie free. Puff and short crust pastry may taste good, but they both contain a lot of fat and calories. However, filo pastry is practically free from both, says the Diet & Fitness Today website. Because filo is thin, try using several sheets to thicken your base and ensure your filling doesn't soak through while the pie is setting.
Creamy, Low-cal Filling
Higher calorie strawberry pie recipes, such as Betty Crocker's version, use cream cheese for the filling. However, you can add creaminess and moisture without the calories by using low-fat buttermilk or plain yogurt, says the Diet & Fitness Today website. As these low-fat alternates are less thick than cream cheese, you will need less of them, which means you can save even more calories. If you do need to add thickness, opt for ricotta cheese or a low-fat cream cheese variety.
Non-creamy Filling
For a truly guilt-free strawberry pie, you could always ditch the creamy filling altogether and opt for recipes where the filling is based on gelatin instead. This could help to reduce the calories in your strawberry pie by as much as 90 percent. This is because, according to the Diet Bites website, there are around 100 calories in one ounce of cream cheese, compared to around 10 in half a cup of sugar-free gelatin.
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