Carrot & Cardamon Pate De Fruit Recipe
By Nicola Lando
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15 minutes prep time
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45 minutes cook time
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Intermediate
A 'pâte de fruit' is a clear French style jellied fruit, set with pectin, and coated in sugar. Their luxury lies in the intense flavour of the key ingredient - the fruit, or in this case carrot - reduced with sugar, into a thick-set preserve. Supermarket, or bland corner shop carrots, are not ideal for this pâte de fruit recipe - it's one to save for a glut of sweet, 'carroty' carrots, from the garden or a farmer's market.
This recipe was inspired by the blackcurrant and licorice pâte de fruit recipe in David Everitt-Matthias' fabulous book Dessert. Everitt-Matthias suggested other ideas for the pâte de fruit, including and carrot and cardamom - a flavour profile reminiscent of Indian desserts, and carrot halwa, which works beautifully in a petit four.
The recipe below (and photographed) makes a firm set. A far softer batch, made with a third of the quantity of pectin, was described by one taster as like eating "jellied baby ears... in a good way". Yup, we weren't sure how to interpret that either - but she happily tucked the box into her handbag to save for later, so I'd imagine it's a good thing. Adjust the quantity of yellow pectin, depending on which texture you'd prefer. With less pectin, the pâte de fruit will need to be refrigerated before slicing.
Ingredients Serves: 20
- 300g cooked peeled carrots (boiled or steamed, keep the cooking water)
- 2g ground cardamon
- 400g caster sugar
- 120ml light corn syrup
- 20g yellow pectin (for a softer set, use less)
- 12ml lemon juice
For the coating
- 75g caster sugar
- 75g granulated sugar
- 1/8 tsp citric acid (optional)
- Gold leaf to garnish (optional)
Method
- Line a 10cm x 16cm rectangular dish with oiled baking parchment or silicon paper (greaseproof paper will stick).
- Blend the cooked carrots in a food processor, adding a little of the cooking water at a time until the carrot forms a smooth purée. The water will boil off when the pâte de fruit cooks, so if you add a lot, cooking will just take a little longer.
- Transfer the carrot purée into a heavy bottomed sauce pan, stir in the cardamom, and bring to the boil. Whisk in 350g of the caster sugar and the corn syrup, and bring to the boil again. Mix together the remaining 50g sugar and pectin, and set aside.
- Keep stirring the mixture with a whisk. When the temperature reaches 102°C, whisk in the pectin/sugar mixture. Continue stirring until the mixture reaches 108°C. Stir in the lemon juice, remove from heat and pour into the lined dish.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
