Carrot Cake with Candied Carrot Curls

If you do a search for "carrot cake images," you will get a page full of cakes with piped frosting carrots for the decoration. I wanted to create a more high class decoration. Carrot cake has a somewhat humble reputation, but with the added spices in mine, plus the vanilla bean cream cheese frosting, I've been able to lift it into the category of fancy desserts.

This cake has 3 layers of moist, spicy carrot cake, with tangy, not too sweet vanilla bean cream cheese frosting. On top are the candied carrot curls.

Candied Carrot Curls

1 large carrot, peeled

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

Heat the oven to 225 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. With your vegetable peeler, peel long strips down the carrot. Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a medium, heavy duty saucepan over medium high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the carrot strips and reduce heat to medium. Simmer 15 minutes, then drain the liquid into a heat proof bowl. Allow the liquid to cool before discarding. Let the carrot strips cool 5 minutes in the strainer, then lay them out flat on the parchment lined sheet. Bake 30 minutes. 

Working quickly, spray a large plastic straw with cooking spray and carefully wrap the carrot strips around it, then slide the curls off onto the parchment. The curls will loosen a bit, so wrap them tighter than you want them to end up. If they get too cool and start stiffening up before you can get them all curled, pop them back in the oven 5 minutes. Let the curls cool completely on the baking sheet, 20-30 minutes.