Baked Not-Raw Carrot-Flax Crackers: What to do with leftover vegetable pulp from juicing

Stop yelling at me, raw foodists!

I’m not sorry these weren’t raw. Baking is so much easier, and I wanted to dilute the amount of flax with this lovely, nutty lentil flour I have from Cuisine Soleil for my gluten-free baking classes. Plus I don’t own a dehydrator, which would have made raw crackers a lot easier. If someone wants to give me a dehydrator I will consider making these raw. I have tons of flax, so there’s really no practical excuse except for the fact that currently to do these raw I’d need to leave my oven door open for half a day set to the lowest temperature. This is so environmentally non-friendly in August in Montreal when I have my air conditioning going so I don’t pass out from heat stroke while working from my kitchen table.

I also made these because I made a caramelized carrot soup from Modernist Cuisine and it was amazing, but it requires juicing tons of carrots. I’m not throwing out all that carrot pulp. So I frozen it until I was ready to make crackers. Then I defrosted it in the fridge (you could nuke it if you’re going to bake the crackers anyway…) and added the remaining couple of ingredients.

So you have options. Here are two. Both are excellent. One is harder than the other. The first is hard enough, because it requires a juicer. Normally that’s the one I choose. But we can’t all be saints all the time. I’m going to justify it by saying I’m keeping my carbon footprint down but that lentil flour probably has a track record. There’s no winning this one. It’s your call.

Baked (Not Raw) Carrot-Flax Crackers

3 cups carrot pulp from juiced carrots (throw in other pulp if you’ve got it: cucumber, kale, beets, orange, apple, though the sweet ones are, admittedly, a bit weird with this recipe)
1 1/2-2 cups lentil flour
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp ground flaxseeds
1 tbsp dried thyme or rosemary, optional
2 tbsp ground psyllium husk (it helps the lentil flour go down), optional

Combine everything in a big bowl, mixing with your hands. Start with 1 cup of flour and add more until the batter isn’t gloopy. It shouldn’t be stiff, but it shouldn’t be like cupcake or pancake batter. Taste and add salt if necessary.

Combine everything in a big bowl, mixing with your hands. Taste and add salt if necessary.