Glazed Carrots

I had slender carrots and the recipe seemed to be going OK, except the glaze just did not seem to be thick enough to coat the carrots as directed. So I kept on cooking and eventually I had nicely coated carrots. The portion sizes seemed small and that was because the carrots had actually shrunk. They did not turn mushy, but were concentrated in flavor with a weird texture. I wonder if I added the brown sugar mixture too soon, I thought all of the water had evaporated. This would have tasted better if the carrots had not shriveled.