Gluten-Free Pumpkin Quiche with Broccoli

Name: Pumpkin Quiche with Broccoli (Gluten Free)
Prep time: 45 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 75 min
Ingredients: 100 grams plantain flour; 45 grams cassava flour; 2 tsp dried rosemary; ½ tsp garlic powder; ½ tsp salt; 75 gr melted coconut oil; 60 ml coconut milk; 600 g organic pumpkin (diced); 100 gr broccoli florets; 1 tbsp olive oil; 5 eggs; 2 tbsp chopped chives; 100 ml coconut milk; Salt and pepper to taste; To serve: fresh parsley

This delicious pumpkin quiche with broccoli is gluten-free, with a homemade crust made from plantain flour and cassava flour. The crust takes a little more work than a regular pastry crust, but it’s definitely worth it.

Pumpkin and broccoli are roasted first, which gives them more flavor and, importantly, removes some of their moisture. The result is a savory pumpkin quiche with a crisp crust and a filling that isn’t watery.

And while pumpkin season is obviously the perfect excuse to make it, you can buy pumpkin – and definitely butternut squash – pretty much year round. So no need to wait until fall.

Tip from Simone
Ingredients and substitutions
How to Make Pumpkin Quiche
Blind Baking the Crust
FAQ Gluten-Free Pumpkin Quiche

Tip from Simone

I have made a gluten-free pumpkin quiche before, but for the previous version (pumpkin quiche with sausages)I used the pumpkin itself as the crust. This time I wanted to try something different and make a pastry crust with plantain flour and cassava flour.

My first attempt failed rather badly. Plantain flour is wonderful to work with, but very different from regular flour, so it took a while to find the right ratio of flours and liquid. The crust needed to hold together, taste good (of course!) and not be ridiculously complicated to make.

The combination below did the trick. One important difference from regular pastry: you press this dough into the quiche pan rather than rolling it out.

Ingredients and substitutions

Pumpkin – You need about 600 grams of diced pumpkin. You can cut up a fresh pumpkin or save yourself some work and use ready-cut pumpkin cubes. Butternut squash works well too.
Broccoli – I use about 100 grams of broccoli florets. Keep the florets fairly small so they roast at roughly the same rate as the pumpkin.
Plantain and cassava flour – These two gluten-free flours form the base of the crust. Plantain flour behaves quite differently from regular flour, so I wouldn’t simply swap it one-for-one for wheat flour.
Coconut oil and coconut milk – These provide the fat and moisture needed to bring the crust together. Coconut milk also goes into the egg filling. If you’re not a fan of coconut, you can replace the coconut milk in the filling with heavy cream.
Herbs – I use dried rosemary and garlic powder in the crust and fresh chives in the filling. You can easily change the herbs depending on what you have.

How to Make Pumpkin Quiche

Start with the pumpkin and broccoli. Spread the vegetables over a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for about 20-25 minutes.

Roasting the vegetables first is an important step. Pumpkin contains quite a bit of moisture, and putting it straight into the quiche can leave you with a watery filling and soggy crust. Roasting removes some of that moisture while also concentrating the flavor.

While the vegetables are roasting, make the crust. Mix the plantain flour and cassava flour with the rosemary, garlic powder and salt. Add the melted coconut oil and coconut milk and knead until you have a firm dough.

Blind Baking the Crust

Grease your quiche pan well before adding the dough. I use a quiche pan rather than a springform pan, as that helps prevent the filling from leaking out.

Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan with your hands. Try to keep the thickness fairly even so the crust cooks at the same rate everywhere.

Unlike a regular pastry crust, you don’t need baking beans or another weight for blind baking. The dough doesn’t puff up in the same way. Bake it for about 15 minutes, until it has a little color and no longer looks raw.

That short pre-bake also helps prevent the dreaded soggy bottom.

Add the filling

Spread the roasted pumpkin and broccoli over the pre-baked crust.

Beat the eggs with the coconut milk, chopped chives, salt and pepper and pour the mixture over the vegetables. Bake for around 30 minutes, or until the egg mixture is set.

Let the quiche settle briefly after taking it out of the oven before cutting it. Finish with some fresh parsley.

Variations

Once you have the crust sorted, you can easily play around with the filling.

A little feta works really well with pumpkin and would turn this into a delicious pumpkin and feta quiche. And since I seem to have been putting goat cheese in everything lately, goat cheese is obviously another option.

If you don’t need the quiche to be vegetarian, bacon or diced ham would also work well. I’ve made it with caramelized onions before too, which are particularly good with the sweetness of the pumpkin.

You can also add red onion or spinach, or finish the quiche with a little Parmesan. Just be careful about adding lots of vegetables that release water while cooking; the filling needs to stay firm enough to set properly.

Storing

Keep leftover pumpkin quiche covered in the fridge. To serve it warm again, reheat individual slices in the oven until heated through; this also helps the crust stay crisper than reheating it in the microwave.

FAQ Gluten-Free Pumpkin Quiche

Roasting removes some of the moisture from the pumpkin and concentrates its flavor. This helps prevent the filling and crust from becoming soggy.

No. Unlike regular pastry dough, this plantain and cassava flour crust doesn’t puff up while baking. Simply press it firmly into the greased quiche pan and bake it for about 15 minutes before adding the filling.

Yes. Butternut squash is a good replacement for pumpkin in this quiche. Cut it into similar-sized cubes and roast it with the broccoli before adding it to the crust.

For the filling, you can replace the coconut milk with heavy cream if you prefer. The coconut milk used in the crust is part of the flour-to-liquid ratio I developed for this particular dough, so I wouldn’t replace that without testing the result.

Feta, goat cheese, caramelized onion, spinach, red onion, Parmesan, bacon or diced ham all work well with pumpkin. Avoid overloading the quiche with extra ingredients, particularly watery vegetables, as you still want the egg filling to set properly.