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Lazy Cat Kitchen

A food blog with plant-based recipes from all over the world

Maple roasted carrots with cranberries

November 14, 2018 by Ania - 16

easy, gluten-free, Thanksgivinggo to recipe

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maple roasted carrots platter

Happy mid-week, guys! After a week in sunny Poland, I am back to playing hide and seek with the sun in Bristol. The days are short and often grey, which poses a massive challenge as far as natural light photography is concerned. This week is supposed to be fairly bright and sunny for the first 3 days so I am running around like crazy doing final recipe testing, purchasing the ingredients and shooting both recipes by Wednesday as Thursday and Friday are meant to be dark and cloudy so I won’t get anything done.

My resolve not to use artificial light is eroding slowly. As much as I don’t want to give in, I also feel that the stress of sudden light changes is a bit too much on some days. Like today, the sun was out while I was doing the process shots, the moment I plated and styled the dish a big grey cloud came out of nowhere and sat there in front of my window laughing me in the face.

The colours and aromas of today’s dish of orange zest and thyme made me realise how close it is till Xmas. While we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, I am well aware that next week is going to be all about Thanksgiving for a lot of you, guys. I know from personal experience that being vegan at times when meat is an absolute must on most people’s tables can be particularly difficult and alienating so I thought I would come to your rescue with a few Thanksgiving-friendly vegan dishes.

First up is a colourful side of maple and harissa glazed carrots studded with jammy cranberries and toasted almonds for much needed flavour and texture contrast. This dish is low on effort and easy to make. If you are not a fan of harissa or it’s too untraditional for you, feel free to skip it or swap it out for a range of dry spices like cumin, cinnamon, coriander, paprika or chilli. They all work with carrots, maple syrup and cranberries rather well too.

PS: If you make my maple roasted carrots, don’t forget to tag me on Instagram as @lazycatkitchen and use the #lazycatkitchen hashtag. I love seeing your takes on my recipes!

maple roasted carrots roasted

maple roasted carrots cranberries before roasting

maple roasted carrots out of oven

maple roasted carrots platter held

maple roasted carrots platter close

5.00 from 2 votes
Print
  • serves: 4 as a starter
  • prep: 15 min
  • cooking: 20 min

Ingredients

  • 500 g / 1.1 lb / 17 oz medium young carrots, scrubbed clean
  • 100 g / 3.5 oz fresh cranberries*
  • 60 ml / ¼ cup maple syrup, divided
  • zest of ½ large orange
  • 30 ml / 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 3 tsp harissa paste**, adjust to taste (strength varies!)
  • a few springs of thyme or lemon thyme
  • 1 garlic clove, finely grated
  • ½ tsp salt, adjust to taste
  • black pepper, to serve
  • 20 g / ¼ cup almond flakes

Method

  1. Set the oven to 170° C / 340° F fan forced (or 190° C / 375° F no fan) and line one large baking tray (or two smaller ones) with baking paper.
  2. Trim the green tops off the carrots (you can make pesto out of them or add them to soups) and cut carrots into halves lengthwise.
  3. Coat cranberries in 1 tbsp of maple syrup and mix in orange zest.
  4. In a separate bowl, combine olive oil, 3 tbsp maple syrup, harissa paste, thyme leaves (about 1 tbsp), garlic, salt and a good pinch of black pepper.
  5. Coat dry carrots in the maple and harissa mixture (keep any leftovers) and space them out on a large baking tray,. If you have a large tray, place cranberries at the other end, if not use two separate trays.
  6. Roast for about 20-25 minutes, until carrots are tender and the exterior slightly caramelized and cranberries are soft and jammy. If cranberries are done sooner, remove them from the tray with a spatula and set aside. If you have any leftover carrot marinade, apply it with a brush again half way through the baking time.
  7. Toast almonds lightly in a hot pan until lightly browned and fragrant.
  8. Place roasted carrots and cranberries on a large serving platter. Sprinkle with toasted almonds and fresh thyme or finely chopped carrot tops (but go easy on them as they taste bitter).

Notes

*In case you are wondering, you can use dried cranberries but roasted from fresh are so much nicer! If going for dried ones, use low-sugar ones and you may also want to add a touch of lemon juice to your carrot marinade to maintain the balance of flavours.
**If you don’t like harissa, skip or use a mixture or one of these dry spices such as cumin, coriander, cinnamon, sweet smokey and hot paprika (or chilli) instead.

If you want more info on some of the ingredients that we use in our recipes, check out our glossary.
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This recipe has been written by Ania. She is the cook, stylist and photographer behind Lazy Cat Kitchen. You can read about her journey into food blogging here. You can also check her out on Pinterest and Instagram.

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    Comments

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  1. Tori Billings says

    November 14, 2018 at 5:15 pm

    Is that amount for the almonds supposed to be 1/4 CUP? This recipe looks really good, though I’m not at all sure what harissa is. (Even my spell check doesn’t recognise it! Lol) I’ll probably sub with paprika or cumin. Also, wouldn’t frozen cranberries work? I doubt you’d even need to thaw them first.

    Thanks!

    Reply
    • Ania says

      November 14, 2018 at 5:21 pm

      Yes, that’s right, sorry, I missed it when proofreading. Harissa is an aromatic and spicy Tunisian spice paste but as I said dry spices will work well also. I haven’t tried using frozen cranberries, but my guess is that they will. Hope you’ll enjoy it if you decide to make it. Ania

      Reply
  2. conny dequeecker says

    December 22, 2018 at 7:14 pm

    hey, again an amazing recipe!
    i’m serving this for Christmass this year!
    tonight i’m making the Brussels sprouts again, so good!
    thanks for all great recipes, enjoying the holidays and i wish you a fantastic 2019!
    x

    Reply
    • Ania says

      December 23, 2018 at 1:31 pm

      Thank you for your lovely wishes, Conny! I’m delighted to hear that you are enjoying my recipes and hope you have a very Merry Vegan Christmas and NY too! x Ania

      Reply
  3. Sangeeta says

    December 23, 2018 at 3:21 pm

    Hi Ania. This looks delicious. I would like to make this for Christmas. However, I am running out of oven time and space. Is there a way to make this without san oven?

    Reply
    • Ania says

      December 23, 2018 at 3:26 pm

      Hi Sangeeta,

      I am not sure I understand your question – did you mean to write without an oven or without a fan oven? If the former, I am afraid not, but if the latter yes, simply bake at 190° C / 375° F. Hope that helps! Ania

      Reply
  4. tina says

    November 10, 2019 at 7:47 am

    I made it tonight and it was very good. I only used 2 tsp of harissa because I don’t like spicy food. It was the perfect amount. I would like to know if we can chop them up a bit smaller because it would spread the great flavor better.

    Reply
    • Ania says

      November 11, 2019 at 1:11 pm

      Hi Tina,

      I’m glad you enjoyed them and sure you can chop them up smaller, just watch them as they will cook much quicker I imagine. Ania

      Reply
  5. Connie Cox says

    November 22, 2019 at 11:15 pm

    I would love to have your brussel sprouts recipe.

    Reply
    • Ania says

      November 23, 2019 at 2:02 pm

      Hi Connie,

      Sure thing, here it is. Ania

      Reply
  6. Hailey says

    November 8, 2020 at 4:01 pm

    Thoughts on how to make this ahead of time?

    Reply
    • Ania says

      November 9, 2020 at 8:29 pm

      Hi Hailey,

      I have not done this, but I guess you could bake ahead of time, refrigerate and then bring to room temperature before swerving. I would keep toasted almonds separately, in an air-tight container, until serving as otherwise they will get soggy. Hope this helps! Ania

      Reply
  7. Deb says

    December 17, 2020 at 7:35 am

    I made a recipe for last Christmas that looked like this recipe but used heirloom carrots and had measurements for cumin, coriander etc and didn’t use harissa paste. It was amazing and of course now I’ve lost the recipe! Going to try this one this year without harissa and hope it’s similar.

    Reply
    • Ania says

      December 17, 2020 at 2:17 pm

      I’m sorry you lost the recipe you liked, but I hope you will enjoy this one too. As for the spices, I would use approximately 1½ tsp cumin, 1 tsp coriander, ½ tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp sweet smokey and 1/8 tsp hot paprika or chilli. Hope this helps! Ania

      Reply
  8. Deb says

    January 22, 2021 at 8:03 pm

    Thank you, it did. This is a fantastic recipe!

    Reply
    • Ania says

      January 22, 2021 at 11:53 pm

      Thank you, I’m really pleased you enjoyed it! And thanks for taking the time to let me know that you did. x Ania

      Reply

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Ania Marcinowska
Hi, I'm Ania. I love good food but I love animals more! Adopting a plant-based diet has been the best decision I've made and that's how this blog was born. It's a space where I want to show you that creating delicious plant-based food isn't actually hard at all.
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