The recipe that ate my kitchen

You see that pretty, shiny, bright orange stuff in that photo up there?  That stuff is Carrot Confiture (preserves).  Yes, you read that right  -- carrot.  I saw it being made on a tv cooking show - French Food at Home, and I knew I had to make it as a gift for Dear Friend K.  K likes weird things, so I thought this was right up her alley. 

But, that pretty, shiny, bright orange stuff took over my kitchen the first time I made it.  Witness:

As it was cooking, it bubbled and splattered so much that my kitchen looked like some sort of alien war zone.  I am still finding it stuck in weird spots!  The night I made it, after I had cleaned up the wreckage, I looked in the mirror, and found it on my face and in my hair.  And the worst part? Even after all that, I still ended up with this mess:

Yeah. I burned it.  So all that mess and it was a total waste. 

Not one to let failure get me down, I went back to the interwebs to figure out what I did wrong.  You see, the recipe that I found on CookingChannelTV.com was not all that specific, so I sort of had to guess.  In the recipe, you boil carrots until they are tender, and then it just says to puree and then cook with sugar and lemon juice.  I wasn't sure if that meant I should keep the water, or drain the carrots, so for the first attempt, I kept the water, which turned out to be a gigantic mistake.  I learned this after I went searching on YouTube for video of the show where Laura Calder makes the stuff.  After I watched the video, I tried again.

The second batch was a success, and not nearly as messy!  The stuff is very sweet, but I thought it was pretty good.  Not sure I recommend making it, unless you want to for the novelty of it.

Carrot Confiture
Source: French Food at Home, Laura Calder
Makes 2 cups

1 pound carrots, peeled
Water, as needed
2 cups sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 2 lemons
10 whole almonds, chopped
2 tablespoons Cognac

Slice the carrots and put them in a saucepan covered with water.  Boil until very soft, then DRAIN, then run through a food mill to puree (fp note: i don't have a food mill, but i do have a potato ricer, which i used for this. i think it worked just fine.).  Return to the saucepan.  Stir the sugar into the puree, and add the lemon juice and zest.  Bring to a boil, and cook until glassy and jammy.  Remove the pan from the heat and stir through the chopped almonds and the Cognac. Cool.