Tarte Lorraine aux Carottes (Carrot pie)
Here I thought Americans were the only ones trying to disguise sugary, high-calorie desserts as nutritious by including symbolic vegetables (i.e. carrot cake, zucchini bread, pumpkin pie…). Turns out the French are pretty good at it too.
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Ingredients
- Flour 2 cups (250 g)
- Butter 1/2 cup (125 g)
- Salt 1 pinch
- Carrots 1-1/2 lbs (800 g)
- Lemon 1
- Eggs 3
- Sugar ¾ cup (150 g)
- Butter 3-1/2 Tbsp (50 g)
- Ground almonds 7 oz. (200 g)
- Cinnamon and nutmeg optional seasoning for taste enhancement
Instructions
For the pie crust:
- In a bowl combine the flour and the salt with the butter.
- Cut in the butter, easily managed with a pastry cutter, also possible with knives or fingers (though not both at the same time).
- Add a bit of water, a little at a time, until a soft dough forms.
- Form into a ball and refrigerate covered for 30 minutes.
- Roll out to at least the size and roughly the shape of your pie pan.
For the filling:
- Preheat oven to 410°F (210°C)Peel and grate the carrots. Dress and bandage any wounds.
- Zest the lemon. (The recipe suggests blanching the zest in boiling water for 2 minutes and then chopping it finely. My zest was already pretty finely zested so I skipped the blanching, but bravo if you go through the trouble.)
- Separate the eggs. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until it becomes ribbon-like.
- Combine the ribbon sugar-yolks with the grated carrots, the ground almonds and the lemon zest in a bowl. Season with cinnamon and nutmeg if desired.
- Beat the egg whites into snow.
- Combine the egg whites with the rest of the filling.
- Pour into the pie crust.
- Bake for 35 minutes.
Notes
Now this would really be above and beyond the call of duty, but the cookbook suggests you could decorate the pie with thin slices of carrot that you candied in a sugar syrup. If you do, please don’t tell us. We would only feel bad that we served ours unadorned.
*Pie crust alternative for busy parents: buy a prepared crust at the supermarket. Place in pie pan.
*Pie filling alternative for busy parents: buy a can of cherry pie filling. Open and dump into prepared pie crust. Make carrot pie when the children are older and can grate their own carrots.