Gluten Free Amish Oatmeal Pie (Dairy Free)

If you love pecan pie but can’t have tree nuts, make our version of Amish Oatmeal Pie! This pie is adapted from a traditional Amish recipe and it uses oatmeal instead of pecans. It has a crisp top and creamy custard filling inside. It’s dairy free, gluten free, and peanut free!

If you’ve been looking for a pecan pie alternative due to tree nut allergies, my version of Amish Oatmeal Pie is a must try!

For years, I’ve been thinking about making a pecan pie-type dessert for my daughter who has tree nut allergies to pecans and a few other nuts. I’ve thought about it off and on over the years but didn’t think it was possible to make, so I forgot about it for a while.

A couple weeks ago, I was scrolling through Instagram and a video by Julie at Tastes of Lizzy T caught my attention: she was making a traditional Amish oatmeal pie from an old Amish cookbook that was like pecan pie without the nuts. Mind blown. I had to make it!

I tried out the original recipe (making it dairy free of course), and it was too sweet for us, and my husband disliked the texture of the old fashioned oats (he is not a fan of oatmeal). The filling seemed to be missing something, too, which turned out to be a little bit of salt, which acts as a flavor enhancer in sweet foods and balances out the sugar.

I really wanted to make this recipe work, so I made some of my own adjustments to the recipe by slightly reducing the amount of sugar, using quick oats instead of old fashioned oats for a better texture, and adding cinnamon and a little salt to enhance the flavor of the filling.

The resulting pie was a hit! The oatmeal rises to the top of the filling, creating a crisp layer on top similar to regular pecan pie, but without the pecans. It’s not overly sweet like the original, and the little bit of salt and cinnamon helps to balance the sweetness of the filling as well.

Our version of Amish oatmeal pie is:

• Gluten free
• Dairy free
• Peanut free
• Tree nut free (depending on what kind of dairy free butter you use)

How to make Amish oatmeal pie

This oatmeal pie recipe is pretty simple and uses ingredients most people already have on hand, nothing fancy here! It’s also very easy to put together.

Here are the steps for making this pecan pie alternative (the full recipe card is at the end of the post, this is just an overview of steps):

1. If you’re using a frozen pie shell, take that out of the freezer to thaw for about 20 minutes before baking. It should be a 9-inch pie shell to fit all of the filling.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
3. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together all of the pie ingredients: the eggs, brown sugar, sugar, butter, quick oats, oat milk, vanilla, salt, and cinnamon.
4. Pour the pie filling into the pie shell and bake for 50 minutes. The filling will be slightly puffed up and a bit jiggly when it’s done cooking. It will de-puff and firm up as it cools.
5. Once the pie is mostly cool, serve with dairy free whipped cream (we love So Delicious Cocowhip).

I highly recommend baking this pie with a cookie sheet under the pie plate to catch any potential spills or overflows. I only had the pie filling overflow once while testing this recipe while I used Just Egg instead of the real eggs, so it hasn’t normally overflowed when making this with real eggs.

But I think it’s always a good idea to be safe rather than having burned pie filling all over the bottom of the oven in case the pie shell was slightly too small or the filling got too bubbly! I always added a sheet pan with the pie plate out of an abundance of caution even if I didn’t need it.

Can I make this oatmeal pie recipe without eggs?

I really wanted to make an egg free version of this pie for people with egg allergies, but my attempt to make it egg free did not work sadly. At this time, I don’t have an egg free version of this pie.

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to just skip the eggs in this pie filling since they make up a large part of this recipe and provide the structure. So I tried using Just Eggs and it was a bust.

I followed the recommendation to use 3 Tablespoons Just Egg to replace 1 large egg, so I ended up using 9 Tablespoons of Just Egg in this recipe. It overflowed out of the pie crust and tasted terrible. Fortunately I had put the pie pan on a cookie sheet in case of spills, or my oven would be a smelly mess right now!

My Just Egg was getting close to expiring and was thicker than normal, so I’m not sure if it was on it’s way out and that’s why it overflowed and tasted gross. I thought about buying fresh Just Egg and trying again. But I didn’t want to waste another gluten free pie crust and pie ingredients (we had to toss the other one), so I decided not to attempt that again and just stuck with real eggs.

Another day, I’ll try this again with fresh Just Eggs maybe, but I’m too worried about ruining an entire pie again so it won’t be for a while. If you want to try it yourself, just be warned that it may not turn out using Just Egg.

Can I reduce the sugar in this pie recipe?

If you wanted to reduce the sugar in this pie recipe, you could theoretically swap out some or all of the sugar for granulated sweeteners. However I haven’t tested this out on this particular recipe, so I’m not sure how it would bake up with sugar substitutes.

If you experiment with sugar subs for this recipe, I’d definitely keep a sheet pan underneath the pie plate to catch any spills or overflows if changing the sugars results in any overflows with the pie filling!

Gluten free pie crust options

Since I wanted to make this pie without working up a recipe for the crust yet, I opted for a pre-made gluten free crust with this recipe.

We have an older recipe for brown rice flour pie crust, but since I haven’t revisited that recipe in quite some time and I didn’t want to mess with a homemade crust for this recipe, I used the Wholly Gluten Free pie shell.

I’ve also made this pie with the regular Wholly Wholesome crust and their regular pie crust is excellent as well! If you don’t need this recipe to be gluten free, the traditional wheat flour Wholly Wholesome crust is delicious and dairy free and soy free (though it does contain CC warning for dairy and soy).

I did notice that the regular Wholly crust was slightly taller than their gluten free one, and I was worried the pie filling would overflow in the shorter gluten free crust. But it didn’t overflow! I do recommend still putting a cookie sheet under the pie plate while it bakes just in case (better safe than sorry in this case!).

Right now, we haven’t developed a new recipe for pie crust, but if you have a favorite gluten free pie crust recipe that you love using, you can use that one for this recipe! Just make sure it’s a crust in a 9-inch pan since this pie filling recipe is meant for nothing smaller than a 9-inch pan.

Once I get a new pie crust recipe created, I’ll link it here!

Allergy friendly pie crust options:

• Wholly Gluten Free pie shell
• Wholly Wholesome Pie shell (contains wheat but no dairy or soy)
• King Arthur Flour pie crust mix
• Bob’s Red Mill gluten free pie crust mix

Check out our other allergy friendly holiday recipes!

• Dairy Free Gluten Free Pie Recipes for the Holidays
• Easy Gluten Free Crustless Pumpkin Pie
• Gluten Free and Dairy Free Christmas Cookies
• Allergy Friendly Thanksgiving Recipes