Roasted carrot dip

I often fall into the habit of serving something sweet for the kids' afternoon tea. Sure they love scones, slices, biscuits, pikelets etc but they seem to get enough sugar in their days, and I find our sugar consumption creeps up on us without me realising it.

When I bought some lovely sourdough recently I thought I'd serve it for afternoon tea along with some things to put on top. We had some humous, cheese and olives in the fridge, and I decided to make a carrot dip to go with it. I've made several times before but always served to adults along with a beetroot dip and olives. The original recipe is here at Gourmet Traveller and suggests making labne to have with it and serving it with pitta toasts. It's pretty simple to make, particularly if you have some kind of food processor to wizz it up in. The roasting of the carrots and garlic are what really gives this its wonderful flavour and elevates it to something a bit special.

Roasted carrot dip

4 large carrots, peeled and chopped into large chunks
5 cloves garlic, separated from bulb but skins intact
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup natural yoghurt
1 lemon, juiced and zested

Preheat oven to 200c. Place carrots and garlic in a baking dish, along with a good glug of olive oil. Cook until tender. When cooled enough to handle, squeeze garlic from skins and discard skins. Place everything from the roasting pan (including oil) plus the remaining ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Alternatively, mash the carrot and garlic with a fork then mix in the other ingredients. Keeps covered in the fridge for 2/3 days.

 They liked it all partly because it was a change, I think (but I'm sure there'd be a mutiny if the sweets were off the list permanently ;-)  PS - arghh, this formatting malarkey is driving me nuts!!