Dish from Culinary Class Wars 2!
If you’re also a fan of Netflix’s latest show, Culinary Class Wars Season 2, then you’re in luck.
This recipe is my take on the popular Carrot Cake from the show. This is black spoon Culinary Monster’s dish.
Not your traditional carrot cake
This is not your traditional carrot cake with shredded carrot cake batter and cream cheese frosting.
I feel like this is a Korean-inspired carrot cake. It features layers of brioche bread soaked in carrot syrup, carrot jeonggwa and a creamy base, with fried ginger strands as a garnish.
Carrat jeonggwa is like traditional Korean candied carrots. It is made by simmering carrot slices in sugar syrup or honey. The end result is a chewy candied carrot that’s glossy and almost translucent.
The carrot jeonggwa
To make the candied carrots is actually very simple!
All you need is a little bit of patience.
To make the carrot jeonggwa, I made a simple sugar syrup by combining equal parts of white sugar and water.
I cut the carrots into thin coins, and then added them to the sugar syrup.
I let the carrots simmer for at least 10 minutes, until it became a completely different consistency!
After simmering the carrots in the sugar syrup, it became smaller in size, chewy and almost translucent!
It reminded me of those dried apricot/mango snacks, except it’s super glossy!
The brioche 'cake' layers
Since this is a carrot cake, there has to be cake layers.
Culinary Monster made the cake layers by using leftover brioche bread.
The brioche bread is soaked in a homemade carrot syrup. After soaking, the bread becomes soggy but very sweet and almost like a cake texture. Especially when you eat this with all the other elements (cream, candied carrots etc) you almost can’t tell that it’s not actual cake.
Brioche bread is more buttery and soft than traditional white bread, so adding sweetness definitely helps it with achieving a cake texture.
The carrot syrup is made by juicing carrots and then adding in sugar.
Note: the brioche bread becomes soggy really fast, and it soaks up all the syrup liquid.
I recommend working quickly when you soak the bread in the syrup.
The cream base
The cream base is made of only 3 ingredients:
- Ricotta cheese
- Greek yoghurt
- Lime zest
When I tasted this combination, it was actually super creamy! It reminded me of mascarpone for some reason.
The little bit of lime zest really brightens up the creaminess so I definitely recommend adding it!
Watch the entire recipe video
Check out my other recipe for white spoon Chef Hu Deok Juk’s carrot jjajangmyeon (black bean noodles)!
Carrot Cake
Ingredients
Method
- Cut the brioche bread into 4 rectangular pieces.
- Use a juicer or blender, extract carrot juice. Note: if you’re using a blender, add some water to the carrots and blend, then put it through a sieve to remove the carrot pulp.
- In a pot on medium heat, add the carrot juice and sugar. Let it slowly cook until it becomes slightly thickened and syrup-like in texture.
- Turn off the heat, add in the brioche pieces and let it soak for 1-2mins. Set aside to cool down.
- In a pot on medium low heat, add water and sugar. Let it come to a slow simmer.
- Add in the sliced carrots into the syrup, and let it simmer for 2 minutes.
- Add in squeezed orange juice and the orange itself too.
- Simmer the carrots until it has become slightly translucent and chewy (~3mins). Set aside to cool down.
- In a bowl, mix together ricotta cheese, yoghurt and lime zest.
- In a pan, add in the oil and let it heat up.
- Add in the ginger strips and let it shallow fry until golden crispy.
- In a small bowl, add some cream base, followed by brioche piece and carrot jeonggwa.
- Repeat step 1 for 2-3 times, depending on how big your bowl is.
- Garnish with deep fried ginger strips on top.
