Mini Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting - Dessert for Two (2024)

Published: Apr 19, 2011 · Modified: May 22, 2020 by Christina Lane · This post may contain affiliate links · 140 Comments

Mini carrot cake for two people made in a 6" round cake pan.

I make a lot of carrot cake this time of year.

It’s not just for Easter in my house; it’s also the birthday cake of choice for many friends with spring birthdays. We’ve been munching on carrot cake cupcakes, carrot muffins, carrot cake whoopie pies and the like since February.

I’m confident that this mini carrot cake is the absolute best carrot dessert to be had. The full-size recipe I used as a reference for scaling down is one of my grandmother’s. No one is quite certain of its origin but most of the time, in my family, a recipe without a source can be attributed to an old issue of Southern Living or a church cookbook.

Whatever the source, this cake makes all who taste it a little weak in the knees. The oil and egg make for a tender cake, the cinnamon adds warmth, and the cream cheese frosting provides its wonderful tanginess. The walnuts on top are optional, but I really love their crunch!

Oh, and this mini carrot cake is made without pineapple. A lot of people ask in my other recipe for small carrot cake (that recipe is made in a 8x8" pan; this particular recipe is made in a 6" round cake pan)

One small note here: You really need to manually shred the carrot with a hand grater. One year, I used my food processor to save time, but the thicker shreds made the texture of the cake seem off. Along these same lines, don’t be tempted to buy pre-shredded carrots. Use some muscle, we only need ¼ cup. Your reward is cake!

Mini carrot cake for two updated notes:

This recipe is quite a few years old, but people continue to write to me and tell me it tastes like their favorite carrot cake for Publix! Which tells me that Publix doesn't use pineapple in their carrot cake, and also has a heavy hand with the cinnamon, just like me.

I hope you and your family love this mini carrot cake. Let me know if you make it for your small Easter celebration.