Experimental food corner: this one's a keeper.

[rivka]

Because of our family crisis at Thanksgiving, we wound up getting our Thanksgiving dinner from a Piccadilly Cafeteria. We tried their carrot souffle, and it was surprisingly good - rich and carroty, with a creamy, velvety texture almost like pumpkin pie filling. It was too sweet for my taste, though, and a little one-note - I wanted to taste some spices underneath the sweet carrot flavor.

I found the recipe online and went to work this evening, making my own adjustments. Wow, was it good. wcg, curiousangel and I scraped the one-quart casserole dish clean, and I'm still wishing for more - I bet it would make a great breakfast. Mine turned out much lighter in texture than I remember the cafeteria's version was - it melted in my mouth. The balance of sweet and spice was perfect. I've already promised to make it for my family as part of Christmas dinner. Really, words cannot express how tasty this was.

Spiced Carrot Souffle (serves about four)

1 pound carrots, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp flour
2 small eggs beaten, or 2 oz beaten egg.[1] Beat the heck out of the eggs with an electric mixer, until they're light-colored and frothy. (I think all the eggbeating is why my souffle was so light.)
1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Boil the carrots until they're very soft indeed. This took longer than I'd expected - probably at least twenty minutes, even though we'd sliced them fairly thin. When the carrots are soft, drain them and put them in a big bowl along with the sugar, baking powder, and spices.[2] Beat with an electric mixer until smooth. Mix the flour in well, then mix in the whipped eggs, and then the softened butter. Beat well each time. Pour the mixture into a one quart baking dish (I used a deep square Corningware dish) and bake for one hour at 350 degrees.

I served it with fried ham and a big green salad, and everything seemed to go together well. Seriously, I want more carrot souffle right now.



[1] This is a halved recipe, and the original called for three eggs. To get 1 1/2 eggs, I beat two large eggs and then poured them into a measuring cup and poured a bit out. I think two small eggs would also be equivalent.

[2] The carrots should be hot for this step, so if you boiled them in advance, reheat them.

Comments

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

This sounds fantastic, thank you! I've saved it to my Recipes file and will be trying it next week.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Great! I hope you'll let me know how it turns out.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

*ng* *ngang* *gnar*

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Oh, my, this sounds very good indeed. Socked away in my Memories file for future reference ...

[ailsaek.livejournal.com]

Oh my. This sounds like something I have got to try. Thank you very much.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, it was very, very nice.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

when my dad was in the hospital, we had thanksgiving dinner in the cafeteria there. everyone else had the turkey and potatoes and cranberry sauce etcetera. i had a cheeseburger and canned peaches. mmmm! (okay, i really like canned peaches.)

[puppytown.livejournal.com]

Oh yum! I love carrots and ginger. Would you recommend trying fresh ginger?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yum. That would probably be really good too. I think it would change the flavor of the dish a lot - fresh ginger and powdered ginger are such completely different animals - so you'd probably want to mess around with the other spices involved.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

That one note sweetness thing is something that bothers me a lot in prepared foods. I bought a lovely pumpkin bar from a local bakery a couple of days ago. Kind of a snack cake like thing. At least it was lovely once I scraped the 3/4 of an inch of incredibly sweet frosting off so I could taste something besides sugar. Honest to Pete, the frosting was a high as the cake thing was. And is was nothing but fat and sugar.

MKK

[dragon3.livejournal.com]

I doubled the recipe back up to size and made it for guests tonight. I thought that was especially courageous because I had never made a souffle before. It was bloody marvellous! Thanks Rivka!

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm so glad you liked it.