Singapore stir-fried carrot cake

Singapore stir-fried carrot cake absolutely has no carrots in it ! WHAT ?!? It is a savory dish made of steamed radish/turnip cake cut into cubes and stir-fried with eggs and seasonings. It’s a local favorite and indeed ours too!

Living in Singapore for a short while sure taught me how to eat “well” (*wink*). The choices of food and the availability of food are simply one of the things I like about Singapore. From fancy restaurants all the way to hawker/street foods, from East to the West, you name it, they have it. Of course I’m always drawn to hawker/street foods anywhere I go. They said Singapore is a shopping haven. Well, I won’t deny that part, I think it’s also a food haven.

Stir-fried carrot cake is one of my very favorite dishes I had in Singapore. I remember almost every weekend morning as I walked to the wet market (almost like the farmer’s market here in the U.S.), I always made sure I made a stop at the hawker center to have the stir-fried carrot cake. Now, as I mentioned before in my previous post for savory daikon/turnip cake recipe that carrot cake is not actually the orange carrots that you imagine. It actually refers to the white daikon/radish. That version I made is much “softer” and not suitable for stir-frying. The carrot cake used for stir-frying needs to be firmer to prevent it turning into mush when you stir-fry the

There are two versions of carrot cakes available, the white carrot cakes and dark carrot cakes. Well, the color difference is merely from the dark soy sauce that is being used in dark carrot cakes. I think they are both equally good. Some people prefer the dark ones over the white ones. This recipe is for white carrot cake. You can easily make this stir-fried carrot cake if you live in Singapore or Malaysia because the steamed carrot cake can be readily bought from grocery stores. I had to make my own steamed carrot cake and believe me, it’s really not that hard. I know I said this a lot, but it really wasn’t that hard. It just takes some time to steam, that’s all! Living far away from my favorite food leave me with a choice, and that’s to make my own and it’s always worth it!

Recipe for making the carrot cake is adapted from Leite’s Culinaria

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Singapore stir-fried carrot cake

Servings 2 servings

Author Marvellina

Ingredients

Ingredients to make the carrot cake:

• 1 1/2 to 2 pounds (1 large) daikon radish, peeled
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons cold water
• 1 1/2 cups white rice flour
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Ingredients for stir-fried carrot cake:

• 3 Tbsp cooking oil
• 2 cloves garlic (peeled and finely minced)
• 1/2 the recipe of homemade daikon/turnip cake (cut into 1-inch cubes)
• 3 eggs (beaten)
• 1 Tbsp of chili sauce (you can readily buy this from Asian grocery store)-optional
• 2 Tbsp of soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp of kecap manis (Indonesian sweet soy sauce)
• 2 scallions (both white and green parts, finely chopped)
• Dash of white pepper powder

Instructions

Making the carrot cake:

1. Grate the daikon with a large grater and place in a steamer to steam for about 20 minutes. When It's cold enough to handle, squeeze out most of the liquid to measure about 1 cup (add some water to it to make up to 1 cup) and set aside
2. In a medium mixing bowl, add in salt, liquid from steaming the daikon, and rice flour. Stir to mix until the batter is smooth. Add in the steamed daikon into the batter and stir again to mix. It should be a thick batter. Pour this into a 9-inch round cake pan. Steam over high heat for 1 hour. Remove from the heat and let it cool down completely
3. You can either remove the cake from the pan or cut them into smaller piece and then cubed them. They are ready to be used for stir-frying or store in refrigerator for up to 1 week. This recipe only requires 1/2 of the cake

Cooking:

1. Preheat a large wok/skillet on high heat. Add the cooking oil in. Add the garlic and stir-fry briefly for about 10 seconds. Add in the carrot cake pieces follow by the soy sauce, dark soy sauce (if making dark version) and stir fry for about 1 minute
2. Pour the beaten eggs over the carrot cakes and leave it for a while. When you see the eggs start cooking, you can stir it up a little bit, be careful not to stir too vigorously or you will break up the carrot cake too much. Add in the chili sauce if using and dash of white pepper powder and continue to stir everything to mix
3. Turn off the heat. Sprinkle in the scallions. Dish the stir-fried carrot cake up into serving platters and serve immediately

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