No Bake Pie Crust Recipe- Vegan, Paleo, Grain Free, Gluten Free, Low Carb

I love cheesecake. I love all sorts of pies. However, they all need pie crusts... And pie crust, seriously, is my enemy. Most of the time.

But this recipe for no bake pie crust? It's something I am really excited about, especially since I haven't seen a recipe like it before; it is something I made up entirely on my own.
You see, this is a paleo/grain free and vegan pie crust, and lower carb as well. Most paleo vegan pie crusts are nut based (as this is), but they usually use dates to bind them, and I didn't think I had any dates when I was making my crust, so I was trying to figure out something that would bind them together.
I recently have become a fan of roasted (and peeled) chestnuts- they sell them in little packages of 100 grams (3.5 ounces) for $1.25 in my local grocery store, and they're quick and easy and I like to have them on hand for a tasty no prep carb. So when I was trying to come up with something to bind my nuts in my crust, I decided to give the roasted chestnuts a try, since they seemed to me that they'd have the right property to replace dates in this recipe.

Wowza! It certainly did the trick! The crust held together beautifully and wasn't nearly as carby as dates would have been. For the entire pie crust its only 53 grams of carbs, so if you make 12 slices of pie with this crust, it's only 4.4 grams of carb per bit of crust... but if you use divide it into 20 (that's how many pieces I divided mine into) its only 2.6 grams of carb per serving of crust, so I think this would qualify this crust as lower carb.

While I used this pie crust for my paleo cheesecake, feel free to use this for anything you like, whether for a chocolate ganache tart, peanut butter pie, cheesecake, or whatever else floats your boat!

This crust is vegan, allergy friendly (unless you're nut allergic), Paleo, gluten free, etc...

To keep the costs down, I used almonds that I bought from the market in bulk bins (cheaper that way) from the cheapest store I found in the market, and they were even cheaper since they were broken almonds, so $4.90 a pound instead of the usual $9 per pound or more.

No Bake Pie Crust Recipe- Vegan, Paleo, Grain Free, Gluten Free, Low Carb

Ingredients:

2 cups nuts- I used 1 cup almonds, 1 cup brazil nuts, but any nut combination will do
1 cup roasted peeled chestnuts (100 gram package)
1/4 teaspoon salt

Instructions:
1. Put your nuts in a food processor and process until they are the size of bread crumbs or smaller.

2. Add your chestnuts and salt to the food processor, and process until it has a workable consistency, about the consistency of standard pie crust dough.

3. Roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper, then take off the top piece and flip it into the pie pan, then separate the bottom piece of parchment paper from the crust. Alternatively, place the parchment paper with the pie crust on it into the pie pan.

4. Use your fingers to take any loose pieces of dough to fill in any holes that may be there.

5. Fill your pie crust!

6. I haven't tried actually cooking the pie crust with filling, but I don't see why it shouldn't work, so if you need to cook your pie filling, cook it now.

Enjoy!

My no bake pie crust filled with delicious Paleo cheesecake- recipe coming very soon!

Are you a fan of pie crust? How do you make it?
What is your favorite way to make no bake pie crust? Have you ever made a nut based one? Ever bind a nut based pie crust with something other than dates? If so, with what?
Does this look like a recipe you'd try?
If you'd make this pie crust, what would you fill it with?