Tasty Carrot Pie
Sweet, spiced, creamy–and similar to pumpkin or sweet potato pie, Carrot Pie is a fun winter pie that’s tasty, healthy and easy!
Isn’t it nice when practical considerations lead to an inspiration! This healthy and tasty Carrot Pie came out of a year when my both of my CSAs had wildly bountiful carrot harvests. Yes, well into the winter, I had carrots—everywhere!
This year, it’s a different practicality. For some reason, all of my squash is going bad early. So instead of homemade “pumpkin” pie, it’s time for carrot pie again!
Ah, the intricacies of eating local. But with such tasty results, I’m excited by the challenge!
Why You’ll Love This!
Flavorful. The recipe is based on a delicious Sweet Potato Pie—yum!
Easy. I used a premade frozen pie crust and blended up my filling in a food processor. All that’s left to do is pour and bake! Easy-peasy!
Healthy. Carrots are maybe even slightly healthier than pumpkin (see Souper Sage for a comparison to squash). Plus how good is getting a serving of vegetables in your dessert!
What You’ll Need
Ingredients
- Pie crust. This holds the pie. You can, however, go with a crustless “pie” if you prefer.
- Carrots. This provides the warm carrot flavor (and a lot of nutrition).
- Cream. With the eggs, this gives the creamy, custard-like character to the pie.
- Sugar. This sweetens the pie. You can use all white sugar or half white and half brown or even 1 1/4 cup allulose sweetener.
- Eggs. This thickens the pie.
- Allspice, Cinnamon, Cloves, Vanilla. These provide warm flavor notes.
- Salt (optional). This is used to counter any bitterness in the carrots more than to enhance the flavors. If you’re restricting salt it should be no problem to omit.
- Lemon juice (optional). In theory, this balances the warm spice flavors.
Special Tools
- No special tools are required.
Step by Step Overview
Place cooked and slightly cooled carrots in the bowl of a food processor or blender, then add remaining ingredients.
Process until smooth.
Pour mixture into prepared pie crust. Transfer to oven and bake until center has set, approximately 40 to 55 minutes.
Variations
I was trying to achieve as bright an orange color as I could, so I used all granulated sugar. But feel free to use half brown sugar for a more caramelly flavor.
If you are reducing the sugar in your diet like I am, you can use allulose sweetener. I have successfully tested this using use 1 ¼ cups of allulose (which is 70% as sweet as sugar), instead of the 1 cup of granulated sugar. You could also omit the crust to reduce the carbs even more.
If you’d like to go dairy free, you could use a plant based cream instead of dairy cream, or use 1/2 cup of melted margarine instead (the latter will make the pureeing more challenging but it’s doable).
And if you’re looking for more Winter Root Vegetable Recipes, how about some Black Bean and Sweet Potato Soup, Parmesan Crusted Carrots, Roasted Beet and Crispy Goat Cheese Salad or Roasted Beet Falafel.
Tips & FAQs
You can roast, boil or even microwave your carrots for this recipe. Just make sure they are tender.
To get the creamiest filling, puree the filling just a little longer after you think it’s done.
This fits a standard commercial frozen pie crust. The filling will be scant if you are using a larger, homemade crust. In that case you can use 1 ½ pounds of carrots and 1 ¼ cups of sugar, with the remaining ingredients the same (this was the volume in the original recipe, but I reduced it to fit the smaller crust).
Why don’t you blind bake the crust first? I know there is controversy about pre-baking your pie crust in custard pies such as pumpkin pie. But since a commercial crust is only so flakey, and because both the original Sweet Potato Pie recipe as well as the classic Libbey Pumpkin Pie recipe don’t prebake, I decided to save myself the extra step. Easy-peasy, remember?
Why did you add lemon juice? In theory, this balances the warm spices. I used it but I’m not convinced it adds much. Or that it’s worth the effort of halving apart a lemon, then figuring out what do with the leftovers. But some people swear by it for sweet potato pie.

Carrot Pie
Ingredients
- 1 unbaked pie crust see notes
- 1 pound carrots trimmed and pre-cooked
- 3/4 cup cream
- 1 cups granulated sugar or half brown sugar, or 1 1/4 cups allulose
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon cloves
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice optional
Instructions
- Place cooked and slightly cooled carrots in the bowl of a food processor or blender. Add remaining ingredients, then process until smooth.
- Pour mixture into prepared pie crust. Transfer to oven and bake until center has set, approximately 40 to 55 minutes.
Notes
Nutrition
Updated from the original published Jan 28, 2016 (to add additional information and slight recipe improvements).
- African Sweet Potato Stew
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This looks delicious, will have to try it out!
Hope you enjoy John!
I can imagine someone sitting down to a piece of this pie and trying to figure out what you had done to your pumpkin pie to make it taste so different.
This is a delicious idea and a great dessert for spring! I can’t wait to try this.
Very pretty pie. I love the decorative touches too.
Thanks Karen!
I developed a potato intolerance, but I LOVE sweet potato pie! I’ve been searching for a great substitution and this may be it! Thanks so much!
This has completely usurped pumpkin pie for me now Elyssa. I hope it works for you 🙂
What a wonderful idea! Although I rarely have any “extra” carrots. Maybe it’s time to buy some carrots and make this on purpose!
I wish I could share some of my carrots with you David! But you know I am now putting in (extra) vegetables to roast every time I have the oven on!
I have never even heard of carrot pie…this is such a clever way to use up carrots…I would love to try a slice of it.
Again, thanks for the inspiration Inger.
Yes, my one regret about long distance “blogging friends” is that we can’t (readily) share food!
what a great idea! i’m not sure why i’ve never thought to do this, and i’m intrigued and enamored! love that color. 🙂
Thanks Grace! You know you probably get a better supply of sweet potatoes than we do here and didn’t need to be inspired.
Great idea. I have been using the excess carrots in one of my breakfast hacks. Post soon.
Ooooo–can’t wait to see that Tammy!
This is such a clever idea! If I ever end up with too many roasted carrots I’ll have to try this.
I have decided that I need to roast vegetables any time the oven is on this winter!