After six+ months of avoiding wheat, corn, and soy, I'm starting to reintroduce those things to my tragically sensitive system. Most days though, I try to keep it "clean" which means I bake my own stuff to avoid the most unavoidable food trifecta in existence. After procuring a gluten-free pie crust mix, the only problem with my original German chocolate pie recipe was the corn starch used to thicken the filling. Coming off of a food fail where I used rice flour to thicken vanilla pudding, I was hesitant to try that again. Rice flour adds a really grainy texture to things and I wanted my pie to be just like I remembered it. Google revealed that people are pretty "meh" about using buckwheat flour as a thickener. I decided to roll the gluten free dice, risking not one but two pies. Buckwheat it is!
German Chocolate Pie Recipe
4 oz. Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup butter
13 oz. can of evaporated milk
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup buckwheat flour (or 3 T cornstarch)
1/8 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/3 cup baker's coconut
3/4 cup chopped walnuts
2 unbaked pie crusts (Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Pie Crust Mix works well. Follow package instructions. Use the butter-only option if you're avoiding soy.)
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The nuts and coconut cover the top until the delicious chocolate mixture puffs up and magically absorbs them into deliciousness. |
Bake for about 30 minutes in a 375 degree oven. The buckwheat flour thickened faster than cornstarch. Add about 15-20 minutes to the bake time if you use cornstarch as your thickener.
The pie was absolutely scrumptious! With or without a little scoop of ice cream... yum! And I'm sure there's no better recipe around, even those that use corn, wheat, and soy.