Instructions

1. Choose fat carrots over slender ones. A wide round has more surface to carry the spice paste, and the thin tip of a small carrot burns to nothing while the rest is still drying.
2. Peel and slice them into coins as thin as you can manage. A carrot is dense and holds its water in the core, so the difference between a crunchy coin and a chewy one is a fraction of a millimetre.
3. Whisk the oil, honey, cumin, cayenne, parsley and salt into a loose paste. It needs to be thin enough to brush; neat honey drags and leaves the spice sitting in blobs.
4. Lay the coins on the trays first and paint them in place. Tossing them in a bowl coats both faces, and a coated underside glues itself to the mesh.
5. Paint the upper face only and leave the underside bare. That bare side is where the water leaves, and it is why these come out crisp rather than sticky.
6. Dry at 125 °F for 8 hours. The low setting is deliberate — honey darkens quickly and cumin turns acrid when it is held hot.
7. Take one off and wait a minute before biting it. A warm coin is always softer than the same coin cold, and the test that matters is whether it cracks between your teeth rather than bending.
8. Store them in a tin somewhere cool for six weeks. Honey and oil both pull the crunch back out of these in a humid kitchen, so a silica sachet in the tin earns its place over summer.