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Friday, March 15, 2013

Carrot Crust Pizza

 
I think I may have created the Easter bunny's new favorite snack.
I have been experimenting with vegetable crusts (Spinach Crust, Cauliflower Crust, Spaghetti Squash Crust) and decided to attempt a carrot one.
I was a little nervous that it would be too sweet from the carrots, or maybe too watery.
Nope.
I would have to say this veggie crust is probably the most pizza crust-y one yet. My taste tester, Kenzie, had no problems picking it up to eat it.
 
 
One of the cutest pizza testers out there. I admit, I'm a little biased.
Anyways...
When I made the Spaghetti Squash Crust Pizza I said it was my new favorite but... I think this one may be my new favorite now. One of these days I'm going to have to make ALL the different veggie crusts at one time and have a taste-off to decide  my all time favorite.
 
 
Carrot Crust Pizza
 
Ingredients
Crust
3 medium carrots
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup mozza cheese, shredded
1 egg
 
Toppings
2 Tbsp pizza sauce
2 Tbsp onion, finely chopped
2 slices bacon, cooked & diced
2 Tbsp green pepper, diced
2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese, shredded
 
Directions
Preheat oven to 400. Line a pizza pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
In a food processor, blend carrots until very finely chopped.
 
 
Take the processed carrot and, using a cheesecloth or clean piece of material (like an old shirt or tea towel), strain as much water (carrot juice) out of the carrots as you can.
Place the strained carrots into a bowl - you should have about 1 cup of carrot.
Stir in garlic, Mozza cheese, and egg until well blended.
Using a spatula, spread out carrot mixture onto prepared cookie sheet to about an 8 inch circle.
 
 
Bake at 400 for 10 - 12 minutes, until just starting to brown around the outside and top appears dry.
 
 
Top as desired. I spread on the pizza sauce, sprinkled with the onion, bacon, and green pepper, then sprinkled the Parmesan cheese on top.
 
 
Place back in the oven for another 5 minutes.
Turn oven to broil and broil for an addition 1 or 2 minutes to brown/crisp things up - keep an eye on it that it doesn't get too brown.
 
 
Remove from oven and let sit for a minute or two. Use the parchment paper to slide off pizza tray. Cut and serve.
Using Fitday, the nutritional info is:
CRUST ONLY - 237 Calories, 10.8 Fat, 19.8 Carbs, 16.5 Protein.
CRUST AND TOPPINGS - 394 Calories, 20.7 Fat, 26 Carbs, 27 Protein.
That is for the ENTIRE pizza. It is a single serving.
*jazz hands*
Have you ever eaten an entire pizza for 400 calories?
Well....now you can.
You're welcome.
 

40 comments:

  1. This is awesome! Thank you for the recipe. I have tried your cauliflower one and didn't tell my husband and he thought it was regular crust that got a little soggy with all the toppings. We are on Weight Watchers so he was so happy whenI told him he could eat the whole half a pizza. I can't wait to try this one now. Thank goodness he is just as adventurous about food as I am.

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    1. Thank you :) I hope you enjoy this one just as much!

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  2. I LOVE this idea! I have been contemplating an avocado pizza crust for a few weeks now. I think you may have inspired me. I am going to share this with my Facebook followers today. I share a Healthy lunch idea with my readers every day. My blog is makethebestofeverything.com. Thanks again for the inspire and sharing this wonderful pizza recipe!!!

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    1. Thank you :)
      Oooh...avocado crust would be delicious!

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  3. This is so cool! I love carrots, and would looooove to make a crust out of 'em. What a clever idea!

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  4. What an awesome idea! I've pinned it ... definitely gotta try this one :)

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  5. I love finding new ways of making pizza crust, this has been pinned for a future try. New email follower from the Clever Chicks Blog Hop.

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  6. What a fab idea. I'd love for you to share this over at my link party :D

    http://thevelvetmoonbaker.blogspot.ie/2013/03/sweet-and-savoury-sunday-3.html

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  7. With the food processor. If you have a juicer it chews up the carrots just as well and removes the juice for you. Just thought I'd throw that out there!

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    1. Thank you :) I've been thinking about getting a juicer

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    2. Fabulous idea! I've been wondering what to do with the veg pulp from juicing. This is ideal! Can't wait to try it. Thanks Jo and Sue for the idea!

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  8. Hello ladies, thanks for linking up this recipe last week :D You've been featured!!

    Hope to see you there again tommorow :D

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  9. Tried this a few nights ago and loved it! With our old oven, cooking time was significantly longer. Also, used juicer instead of food processor (added bonus of yummy carrot juice appetizer ;), but found that I had to spend quite a bit of time picking out large shards of carrot. Will probably go straight to food processor next time. Hubsy loved it, too, and didn't want the "backup dinner" I had planned for him, just in case (couldn't believe it!)Thanks for the recipe! Huge hit!

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  10. Fantastic - just tried this recipe and made 6 mini pizzas. Great for the kids lunches - very hard to find low carb lunchbox stuff that they'll like and that doesn't have artificial sweetener in.

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  11. great idea for me to use up carrot pulp from our juicer... will be trying this soon!

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  12. I made this and it was freakin awesome. I ate the whole thing. I even forgot about the pizza sauce and it was still pizza-ey. This is by far the highest veggie ratio I've ever enjoyed.

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  13. What an awesome idea! I've pinned it ... definitely gotta try this one

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  14. I love this recipe and have tried it a few of times. I'm hopeless with squeezing out all the liquid so the first couple of times were pretty soggy & the crust kept falling apart. Yesterday I used my food dehydrator & it worked really well! I cut the carrots into slices and dehydrated them for 3 hours on 60 degrees Celsius. I might dehydrate them a little longer next time to see if the crust isn't as bendy if even drier. Then I pulverised the carrot slices after that. I think this will be handy to do a lot of carrots ahead of time, like on a weekend, and then store the carrots ready to process during the week when you need a quick dinner. Thanks for sharing your brilliant recipe. ��

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    1. We are so glad you were able to solve the issue you were having with the liquid in the carrots. :) And thank you for your kind words!

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  15. Thanks for the recipe!! I just tried it - delicious, but the crust didn't hold together very well. Is that because it was too moist? Should I add another egg or more cheese? Any ideas???

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    1. You have to really, really, really get out as much liquid as possible. Too much moisture will make it more crumbly. That being said, if you figure it is as dry as it is going to get you could try definitely adding another egg or a bit more cheese.

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  16. A 400-calorie pizza?!? Wow! This is great! I’ve seen cauliflower pizza and other pizzas with an alternative crust, but this is perhaps one of the healthiest ones. This definitely makes eating one of the most delicious food ever a little less sinful. Great job!

    Shaun Leonard

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  17. I love Pizza, too, and I love that pizza theme - raw pizza, vegan pizza, pizza balls, how about fried pizza, hehe?! Yum, love ground flax seeds, the crust sounds pretty tasty.

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  18. I made this, and it was incredible, and will be making this carrot crust again. It makes me wonder what other "crusts" I can make. I have made cauliflower crusts before. They have been good, but much more time consuming, and over all rather expensive. I don't follow a particular diet, other than to eat as wholesome and non processed as possible. I like looking for ways to consume more vegetables, and less refined flours. I used my Kitchen Ninja to process several carrots. I tossed the garlic in with the carrots. After, I patted the carrot mash to soak up excess liquid, but I did not squeeze it out. While I prepped the other ingredients, I spread out a thin layer on a baking sheet in the oven at 350 to let it dry out a little. Then I scraped it back into a bowl and added the cheese and egg. Normally when planning to review a recipe, I will follow that recipe exactly as written. Since I knew I had processed way more than three carrots (I'm a hungry girl with a hungry boyfriend!), I had to guess as to how much cheese to use. I added an additional egg and some dry seasonings, including Parmesan cheese . In addition, this effected baking time, but not by much. What I amassed created three small plate sized crusts; about a step down in size from a dinner plate. I forgot to form the "pizza dough" on parchment paper, but it managed to cook up firmly and was able to carefully lift the crust off the baking sheet with a spatula once done. I flipped it over, added sauce, cheese, pepperoni and banana peppers. Then placed it back in the oven under the broiler. It looked really good! I was pleasantly surprised that it could be picked up (keeping it on the small size it key). It has a really good mouth feel, and the taste is quite mild, considering how many carrots I used. It blows my mind how crust-like it is. The addition of ground flax seeds would compliment the taste and texture quite well. Thanks for the recipe! *thumbs up*

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    1. Thank you so much for your review and instructions on what you did. We have lots of other veggie crust recipes on our blog - spaghetti squash, black bean, carrot, cauliflower, spinach, beet, potato, portobello mushroom.... maybe you want to give one of those a try too? :)

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    2. Indeed I do. You had me at "beet" (ok, and everything else). Beet wraps, beet crust, and beet burgers? YES! I have some cooking to do. :)

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  19. Hi - I'm unable to eat dairy. Has anyone tried making it without the mozzarella?

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  20. I've done zucchini crust and spaghetti squash crust. Now I have to try carrot. Great idea. Found your recipe at the Simple Supper Tuesday Link Party. I am the hostesses of Tickle My Tastebuds and would love you to stop by and link your crust. Here is the link
    http://bit.ly/1HxuOMy
    Lori

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  21. This sounds awesome! I can't wait to try it. Do you think I could you substitute LF Ricotta Cheese for the Mozzarella in the crust?

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    1. The mozzarella acts as a binding agent for the crust. I'm not sure if ricotta would work the same way. If you try it, please let us know how it turns out.

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  22. Oh, amazing! I love juicing carrots but I hate throwing the pulp out. It seems I don't have to do that now! I usually juice a small beet into my carrot juice, so the pulp is not pure carrot, but that should't make a problem, right?

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    1. Not at all. It should still work just fine :)

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    2. Thank you for this crust. It was amazing.

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  23. Hi from Finland. Just made this and it was really good! Definitely will make this again, thanks! :)

    Heidi

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    1. So glad you enjoyed it Heidi! Thanks for letting us know :)

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  25. I just made this last night and it was delicious! We of course made a few adjustments to meet our tastes. Unfortunately, I don't have a food processor so I just used the fine side of the big cheese grater and then squeezed the liquid out. I then followed 'Carey Marquis' advice and allowed the carrot to dry out a bit in the oven at 350 and just kept a close eye on it while preparing the other ingredients. Once I felt it looked a bit dryer I took it out and mixed it with the egg and cheese. I added and extra half an egg to each 'dough' batch along with some roasted garlic (just threw a clove in while the carrot was drying out) , dried basil, oregano, Italian seasoning salt, pepper, and extra Parmesan. Then I baked approx 10-12 min checking often to make sure it didn't burn. Took it out and topped it with pesto, spinach, mozzarella and tomatoes I had previously roasted. I sliced and topped some Roma tomatoes with seasoning and then baked them while the carrot was also drying, I was afraid the tomatoes would have been too runny on the crust if I put them on raw. This was a great recipe the crust stayed together and I didn't even miss all the flour! Thanks for sharing I will probably be making this again in the near future!

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    1. Glad you enjoyed it @rel996 ! :) Thank you for posting your changes

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  26. OH MY ... YOU ARE AWESOME !! i can finally use my carrot pulp for a hearthy meal (not just dessert).

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