FOOD NEWS
Why Do Store-Bought Carrot Cakes Always Feature Those Little Carrots Iced On Them?
By Jessica Fleming-Montoya
We've all seen the carrot cakes with mini, piped frosting carrots on top, and according to an interview with Stella Parks, they might exist to provide a visual cue.
Many pastry chefs will add a distinguisher to cake slices, such as mint to mint chocolate chip cake or carrot piping to carrot cake, so people know which flavor is which.
Of course, this is just one theory, and no one knows where the idea for these tiny carrots adorning these cakes came from.
Little carrot decorations first appeared in the 1960s. Although cake decorating had already been around for a few hundred years, in the '60s, homemakers had more time to decorate.
They'd often use small marzipan carrots or bunnies on their cakes, but as marzipan wasn't easy to come by, people would use piped icing to make the carrots instead.
This practice is thought to have eventually led to the modern iteration of carrot cake topped with piped icing carrots.