A soft and fluffy single serving carrot cake in a mug is the perfect easy dessert for Easter, or for any other day of the year too!
Why you’ll love this carrot mug cake recipe
- It tastes like restaurant style carrot cake packed with sweet carrots and cinnamon, in the convenient form of a portion controlled mug cake.
- Whip up the entire cake in under five minutes, with no oven required.
- Dairy free, egg free, high protein, high in vitamin A, and just 120 calories.
- Enjoy as a quick and healthy snack, or add frosting and toppings and serve for a decadent after dinner treat. A single serving carrot cake recipe that’s made in the oven or microwave and is secretly good for you? It doesn’t get much better than that!
Also try this reader favorite Chocolate Mug Cake
Step by step recipe video
Carrot cake in a mug ingredients
Flour – You need a fourth cup of flour. I like whole grain spelt flour because it adds nutrition and gives you a lighter texture than whole wheat flour.
Oat flour, cup-for-cup gluten free flour, or white all purpose flour work as well. Almond flour does technically work, but the cake will crumble so it is best to eat this low carb version straight from the mug.
Carrots – It sounds funny, but the easiest option is to buy carrot puree in the baby food aisle of your local grocery store. Alternatively, you can puree canned carrots or steam and then puree peeled fresh carrots in a food processor.
Sweetener – Choose any granulated sugar or granulated sugar free substitute. I like to use minimally processed or unrefined sugar, such as turbinado. White sugar, coconut sugar, or xylitol are also good options. Substituting pure maple syrup or honey will yield a somewhat gummy texture, so keep that in mind if you wish to use a liquid sweetener.
Milk of choice – Use any milk in your refrigerator, including plant based varieties like almond milk or coconut milk. You will also need a tablespoon of oil (coconut oil or vegetable oil), almond butter, or an additional tablespoon of milk for a low fat mug cake.
Vanilla – Look for pure vanilla extract instead of imitation, because it gives you the most natural vanilla flavor. If using vanilla flavored milk, you may omit the vanilla extract.
Spices and dry ingredients – The recipe also calls for half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, a fourth teaspoon of baking powder to help with rising, and an eighth teaspoon each of salt and baking soda. Feel free to throw in a small pinch of ground nutmeg or ginger if desired.
How to make the cake
- Begin by greasing a small mug or two small ramekins well. Set aside.
- If you want to bake the mug cake in an oven instead of a microwave, preheat the oven to 350° Fahrenheit or 176° Celsius.
- Add the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, sugar or sweetener, and salt directly into the mug. Stir very well. (If using ramekins instead of a mug, simply combine all ingredients in a cereal sized bowl, then smooth the batter into the prepared dishes.)
- Now stir in the milk, optional oil or almond butter, vanilla extract, and pureed carrots until just evenly mixed.
- Microwave on high power until soft and fluffy. Time will vary by wattage of your machine, and mine takes around two minutes total. Alternatively, bake in an oven safe dish for fifteen minutes or until fully cooked in the center.
- Enjoy straight from the mug. Or let the carrot mug cake cool before going around the sides with a knife to pop the cake out onto a plate.
- If you want to make a cute double layer cake, carefully slice through the middle and frost each layer. Garnish with shredded carrot, diced pecans or walnuts, and raisins as you wish.
Frosting the mini carrot cake
The recipe tastes amazing topped with Coconut Butter or Coconut Whipped Cream.
Or I like to make a basic cream cheese frosting recipe by whipping 2 ounces cream cheese with 1 ounce butter, 1/2 cup powdered sugar or monk fruit, 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, and a few drops milk of choice if needed. (Use plant based cream cheese and butter for a vegan cream cheese frosting.)
This is simply a small batch of the frosting I use on my Carrot Cake Bars.
Carrot cake and frosting are meant for each other. But it need not be cream cheese! You can use almond butter, cashew butter, vanilla yogurt, or a dusting of powdered sugar if preferred.
Carrot Cake In A Mug
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup flour (30g) (or here's a Keto Carrot Cake)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/8 tsp baking soda
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp sugar or sugar free xylitol (24g)
- 3 tbsp cup carrot puree (jarred or steamed from fresh) (45g)
- 1 tbsp water (15g)
- 1 tbsp oil or almond butter, or additional water (15g)
- 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- 1. Grease a small mug or two small ramekins well.
- 2. If baking in the oven instead of a microwave mug cake, preheat the oven to to 350° Fahrenheit (176° Celsius).
- 3. Stir dry ingredients in a cereal bowl or directly in the mug. Then stir in wet ingredients until evenly mixed.
- 4. Microwave on high until soft and fluffy. Time will vary based on wattage. Mine takes around 2 minutes. Or bake in an oven safe dish for 15 minutes or until cooked through the center.
- 5. Enjoy hot out of the mug, or allow the cake to cool before going around the sides with a knife and popping onto a plate.
- 6. For a fun double layer carrot cake in a mug, slice through the middle and frost with cream cheese frosting (recipe included above). Garnish with shredded carrots, chopped walnuts, and raisins if desired.
Video
Notes
More easy mug desserts
Can’t wait to try this!
I hope yesterdays weather didn’t directly affect you! I saw it on the news and it was awful!! We didn’t even get that much rain in Austin.
It was really scary. Unfortunately a lot of my friends lost car and/or house windows. I feel really lucky that all I got was a giant mess of leaves in my front yard.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen my poor dog shake so much :(.
What a timely recipe. First of all, I was already raising my hand when I clicked on your post (the sun was in my eyes and I raised my hand to block it-haha!) and second, I bought a piece of carrot cake at the natural foods market today and it was S-T-A-L-E. Of course, I don’t have any canned carrots, but this stroke of genius has me very excited because the only reason I haven’t made my own carrot cake is that I detest shredding carrots.
I am right there with you! Actually, I think I hate peeling them the most. Such a hassle for lazy girls like me who want their cake right away! 😉
Don’t peel the carrots… The skin is where SO many of the vitamins and minerals are… You just scrub the dirt off. Same with potatoes and other things like that. You want to clean them, but you want the skin on it…
Mashed potatoes, we just do completely wrong in most cases. Most people peel the potatoe, throw the skins away, boil the potatoes, dump the water and eat the inside. If anything, we should be drinking the water (infused with vitamins and minerals) and dumping the inside of the potatoes, lol. 🙂
For boiling carrots, you only want to use a little water so you can use that water in the recipe and keep all the minerals and vitamins.
Hey! Every time a dessert craving kicks in, I always make something from your blog. Usually the cookie ball pops (my husband LOVES them too!!). He loves carrot cake, so he will most likely like this recipe.
I think the next thing I’m gonna try is your cake batter donuts with your hot chocolate butter as a frosting!!! YUM
Aw that really makes me happy… I hope he likes the cake too!
Can you recheck the Nutritional Info (particularly the fat grams) on this one? The recipe calls for 1T of “oil of choice” – most oil you would use for a recipe like this (peanut, safflower, …) is ~13g of fat per T, yet your nutritional content has only 0.5g of fat in a half-recipe. Something seems off there….
Love all the creative ideas you publish – great blog!
Dave, read some of the other comments. Her nutritional info is correct, and she’s answered your question about a thousand times already!
Hi Dave,
As I told the other reader, the calculations aren’t off: From what I’ve seen in cookbooks, it’s standard practice when calculating nutritional info to use the lower of the two items if two are given (such as with the oil and milk). This cake is perfectly delicious regardless of which option you choose to use.
Sorry for the confusion!
This was insanely delicious! I actuallydoubled the recipe, added fresh pineapple chunks and blended with the steamed carrots, added a little applesauce, omitted any artificial sweetener and added raisins. Baked in the oven in aramekins, took more like 25 minutes vs. 10-12. So sweet and moist it probably doesn’t even need the brown sugar. Amazing, thank you Katie!
I love your idea to add the pineapple. I definitely want to try that next time :).
This is my first CCK recipe I ever tried, and now I’m hooked! I had my doubts (It’s fat free? Can’t be good!) But oh wow oh wow was I wrong!
If anyone else is reading this and has doubts, DON’T! This recipe rocked my socks off!
I joined the “made it” club tonight….4 times!! This is good stuff and I didn’t even use frosting
I don’t have kids of my own (yet), but I bet if you made a big batch of batter at a kid’s birthday, you could have each kid spoon some batter in a small mug to “bake” their own cake in the microwave. This would’ve been awesome to have as a kid!
That is such a ridiculously-cute idea!! Bookmarking! 🙂
Katie, I love your single serving recipes!
But I notice they often, especially the ones involving pumpkin/applesauce/puree/tofu/etc, don’t RISE for me. They end up like (admittedly delicious) flourless cakes or brownies in consistency. Looking at your pictures, it seems they rise and get “cakey” just fine for you. I dunno what I’m doing wrong T_T I want carrot cake that’s more than half an inch tall so I can slice it and have a middle icing layer.
Anyone have any tips? They’d be greatly appreciated.
Hmmm… what flour do you use? Can you give me more specifics… and what specific recipes?
I tried using a mix of BRM baking mix and soba flour for this carrot cake, and I used about half of a BRM Egg Replacer “egg.” It seems to happen most often in the recipes that utilize a large amount of “wet” ingredients like veggie puree or tofu. There’s a recipe on here somewhere for a vanilla cake that uses tofu, which did the same thing when I tried it. The thing is, they do rise in the oven or microwave, but then they collapse back down, no matter how long I have them in there for =/ I should note it didn’t happen when I tried to make your banana bread recipe. I use a variety of flours in general though, and it changes. Sorry, I know that’s not very helpful for narrowing it down X<
Unfortunately, I can only vouch for the results of my recipes if you use the flours specified. As you said, different flours can have an ENORMOUS impact on results :(.
Oh gosh, my mom absolutely ADORES carrot cake! THANK YOU! Since she’s diabetic, I think this is a version she actually CAN have! <3 <3 <3
Carrot cake > chocolate cake for me. I know, heresy! You can have my chocolate 😉
I’ve been reading your site for about a month now, drooling over each and over dish you post…..But I’m not a vegetarian, let alone a vegan, and I was wildly intimidated by attempting to cook with, say, tofu (I didn’t even know where to look in the grocery store). Plus I currently live in rural England (so, not so many health food stores around!) with my extremely picky “It’s not a meal if it doesn’t involve pork and chips (french fries)” partner. But he has a weakness for carrot cake, and when I saw these, I decided to give it a go. Oh my God, what a brilliant decision! I also made the better than cream cheese icing, and the entire thing was AMAZING. He requested it again tonight, even after I told him it was a) healthy, b) vegan, and c) involved tofu! I am so excited to have discovered your sight (and thank you thank you thank you for beginning to post the WW points as well! Huge help); I’m now both an avid reader AND cooker of your posts 🙂
Wow, that really makes me so happy! I think it’s my favorite thing to hear that a meat-lover liked a recipe with tofu. I once got my boyfriend to like tofu by feeding him a slice of my chocolate bar pie… he was SO in shock that he’d actually eaten tofu and thought it was good! It was really funny ;).
I literally just made this. Delicious! I doubled the recipe, made it with GF flour, pumpkin puree instead of carrots, used 1 egg, and only 1 pack of stevia and it was GREAT. I did have to bake it a little longer, maybe by about 10 minutes, but who cares. Oh, and I topped it with whipped coconut cream. I am a dessert-lover who can’t have gluten, dairy, or sugar so this blog has been a dream come true. So far I’ve tried the frosting shots, deep-dish cinnamon pie, and now this and everything has been fantastic.
I don’t have spelt in the house and don’t really want to go out and buy any kind of flour anymore. (Your Deep Dish Cookie pie recipe did that to me).
I do have brown rice flour, and also soy flour (soy flour? I don’t know why either) . Do you think either would be good?
Sorry, I really never know if a recipe substitution will work unless I’ve tried it :-?.
I just made this. It is soooooooo good ! For the egg I used an egg white, and 2% milk for the my milk of choice. I also used whole wheat flour, and canned carrots as suggested. 🙂 Thank you so much for this recipe Katie ! I will definitely be making this again when I get a hankering for carrot cake !
Wow, how cool is this? I’m a new visitor, so “Hi”. I came from FoodBuzz. My partner loves carrot cake so I’ll definitely be trying this, and might even get back to you to show how it all went! 🙂
Hi back! 🙂 🙂