Black carrot cake — dark sweet soya fried chai tow kway ($4)!
SG hawker chai tow kway black version — radish cake cubes fried with dark sweet soya, eggs, preserved radish, chai poh. $4.
Breakfast — black carrot cake (chai tow kway) at $4. Dark sweet soya version. 😋
What was on the paper ($4):
- A generous pile of fried radish cake cubes (chai tow kway) on butcher paper — chunks of soft white steamed radish cake wok-fried with dark sweet soya (kicap manis-style), chopped scrambled eggs, preserved radish (chai poh) bits and a touch of garlic.
- The cubes had visible dark caramelised char on the edges from the wok heat.
Black vs white carrot cake is the eternal SG hawker debate — white is the savoury version (fried with light soya + egg + chai poh, no sweet soya), black adds kicap manis (dark sweet soya) for the signature sticky-sweet-savoury profile and dark colour.
The radish cake (made from rice flour + grated white radish + steamed) is the carb base — the name “carrot cake” is the SG mistranslation since the original Chinese 菜头粿 (chai tow kway) means “white radish cake,” but “white radish” was rendered as “carrot” decades ago and the name stuck.
The wok-frying technique creates two textures: the cubes get caramelised dark char on the outside while the inside stays soft and slightly chewy. The dark sweet soya forms a sticky coating that catches the chai poh bits + egg bits.
Chai poh (preserved sweet radish) is the secret ingredient — fermented sweet-savoury radish bits that punctuate every few bites with bursts of sharper flavour.
This version had proper wok hei (smoky char) + the right ratio of egg-to-cube + visible chai poh = textbook black CCK execution at the $4 hawker tier.
Total: $4. Standard breakfast hawker pricing.
Overall: 4.4 / 5. Caramelised char on the cubes, generous chai poh, sweet-savoury balance was right. Black > white in this case. 😍👍🏼
