Carolyn's Carrots

Side Dish or Dessert? Only You Can Decide

May 16, 2007 Dee Van Dyk

This vegetable dish can easily double as a good-for-you dessert.

If you have reluctant vegetable-eaters in your family, you'll love this recipe. Pureed carrots combine with eggs and cream to make a side dish souffle. This dish really amps up the colour value of any meal.

Made with sugar and cream, it's not particularly low calorie, but it is delicious and a perfect accompaniment to a special dinner. But it's the versatilty of this dish that makes it really special. It serves up well as a side dish accompanying pork or turkey, but also works well as a dessert dish. While it's best served hot with a hot meal, it's great cold, too!

Carolyn's Carrots

Ingredients:

2 pounds carrots

1 cup half and half cream

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

Topping:

This topping provides a crisp topping that not only adds to the taste of this dish, but ups the ante in terms of adding another texture level.

1 cup corn flakes, crushed

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon flour

1/4 cup ground pecans

4 tablespoons butter

Preparation:

  1. Peel carrots and trim ends. Cut to 1/2 inch lengths.
  2. Put carrots in pot, cover with water.
  3. Cook carrots until soft. Cool slightly.
  4. Put carrots into blender; add cream and liquefy.
  5. Add to carrot/cream mixture: brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt. Blend until smooth.
  6. Pour carrot mixture into greased casserole dish.
  7. Preheat oven to 350' Fahrenheit.
  8. Prepare topping by combining crushed corn flakes, brown sugar, flour, and ground pecans.
  9. Cut in butter with pastry blender or with hands.
  10. Sprinkle topping over carrot mixture.
  11. Bake for 35 minutes.

Cook's Notes:

Serve With:

This dish goes very well with Pork Tenderloin en Croute, which is a very simple and quick dish. Carolyn's Carrots is a recipe that's still easy, but requires a little more fuss to make. Pairing these two recipes results in an easy, but elegant meal that looks like you spent all day in the kitchen.

Alternative Use:

Go ahead. Serve it warm with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream for dessert. Or a tall glass of cold milk.

Cut the Calories:

Okay, it's possible. The carrots are quite delicious without the topping (bye bye ground pecans and butter and some of the sugar) and you can substitute milk for the cream.

Shave Some Time:

Cutting the topping out of the recipe will also save you a few minutes.

You can also prepare the entire dish a day ahead and simply add the topping at the last minute before you bake this dish. Preparing this ahead makes this the ultimate side dish for that labour intensive Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.

Love Those Leftovers:

If you have any leftovers, this dish serves up cold deliciously.

The copyright of the article Carolyn's Carrots in Recipes is owned by Dee Van Dyk. Permission to republish Carolyn's Carrots in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.