Young Hawker Sells Addictive Turnip “Ladle Cake” Made With Grandma’s 70-Year-Old Recipe

New Tekka Centre hawker stall, the two-week-old Chuan’s Ladle, has been attracting queues since opening for its curiously named “ladle cake”. Shaped like a little UFO, the deep-fried snack resembles the oyster cakes commonly found at pasar malams, stuffed with shredded turnip, minced pork and tau kwa.

The stall also offers other dishes like scallion noodles and bottled sambal chilli, all painstakingly made by Ronald Ong, 35, a former ship broker, using his family’s decades-old recipes. He runs this family business with his mum, Tan Lay Heong, 63, who is the brain behind some of the recipes.
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Ronald’s grandma created the “ladle cake”
The ladle cake, which Ronald calls mang guang kueh (turnip kueh in Hokkien), was inspired by prawn fritters, or hei piah. The recipe was created by his 86-year-old grandma when she used to live in a kampong along Lorong Chuan in the ’50s. Like hei piah, her cake is made by filling a ladle with batter and lowering it into oil to make a deep-fried cake.
“My late grandfather, who is a foodie, wanted to eat hei piah one day. As prawns were expensive back then, my grandma had to get creative to substitute the prawns with other ingredients. She decided to use turnip as one of our relatives had a turnip field at the kampong. She added minced meat and tau kwa in the filling, and the ladle cake was born,” Ronald tells 8days.sg.

Ronald with his brothers and grandma
Grandson picks up recipe by pure estimation
A huge fan of his grandma’s fritters, Ronald decided to learn how to make it from her a decade ago, but it was not without its challenges.
“My grandma didn’t use a measuring scale or cups when she cooked, so I couldn’t get the amount of ingredients right. It took about three years before she gave me a ‘pass’ and I have since taken over cooking it for my family. But I feel it’s still not up to her standard,” he shares.
Encouraged by his family, he started selling the ladle fritters at the Let's Go Jalan Jalan pop-up event in 2018 and it was a hit. Two years later, he started a home-based business selling his fritters on weekends, before quitting his ship broker job last November to open a hawker stall.
“I’ve always wanted to venture into F&B, so I felt now’s the time to give it a shot ‘cos I’m not that young anymore. Furthermore, when I was in shipping, my lifestyle wasn’t very healthy and I wasn’t happy,” he says.
Ronald considers Chuan’s Ladle as his way of honouring his grandma’s legacy as a great home cook. “I’ve always wanted my grandma to have recognition for her ladle cake, plus it’s unique. I have not seen this anywhere else,” he says. He plans to display the story of his family’s ladle cake once his stall is fully done up.

Packaging looks like a wuxia secret manual
What’s also interesting about Ronald’s ladle cakes is that they are packaged in takeaway paper boxes that resemble an ancient mi ji (secret manual). “I designed the packaging like a mi ji ‘cos very few people know about ladle cakes. It’s made with our family’s secret recipe and so is our sambal chilli,” he laughs.

Passing the baton, or ladle, to Ronald
It’s not just the recipe that has been passed down through generations. Ronald also owns a ladle that belonged to his great grandmother. Her four ladles have become treasured heirlooms in the family, and Ronald tells us proudly that he has inherited one of them.
“This is also why we named our business Chuan’s Ladle. The fritter was created in a Lorong Chuan kampong, and the recipe and ladle used to make it have been chuan-ed (passed down in Mandarin) through a few generations,” says Ronald.
But he doesn’t use his heirloom ladle to cook at his stall, for fear of ruining it with wear and tear. “I think it’s more than 90 years old and made of copper. I intend to put it in a case and display it at home. Furthermore, in the past, they believe you cannot wash the ladle with detergent, only with hot oil and water ‘cos it might affect the taste of the food and how the batter coats the ladle. So it’s best not to use it anymore,” he laughs.
Ronald has since bought a smaller ladle which he feels is a more suitable size for his fritters. “Previously, the fritters were two and a half times larger. They were nice but a bit too filling. I could only eat a maximum of two pieces before it gets jelak, as it’s very oily,” he reasons.

The menu
The palm-sized ladle cake comes in three flavours: Original, Coriander and Spicy. The latter two were created by Ronald ‘cos he loves the aromatic herb and spicy food. The fritters are available at a promotional price of $1.50 each till Nov 11, after which they will be sold at $2.50.
Besides fritters, Chuan’s Ladle also serves paper-wrapped chicken ($2.50) and scallion noodles ($1.50), which is made with his mother’s recipe. There are also plans to sell her “addictive” homemade sambal chilli ($8 for a 270g jar), which is currently only offered with the noodles. Made with ingredients like chilli padi, shallots, garlic, ginger and lemongrass, the zingy and fiery sambal was a hot seller on their online store.

The snacks are offered from 8am till sold out (usually around 2pm). We visited the stall twice on weekdays, and saw a steady stream of customers snap up the ladle cakes almost as fast as Ronald can fry ’em.
He currently churns out around 12 pieces in 15 minutes, which he admits is not an ideal rate. “The process is very time-consuming and manual and that’s what’s holding me back. Plus, I only have three fryers, which is apparently not enough,” he says.
He currently sells around 150 fritters a day, with the Original flavour being the most popular. Despite brisk sales, Ronald is reluctant to ramp up his production at the moment. “I want to make sure my workflow is smooth before increasing the quantity ’cos storage is an issue. If I prepare too much batter and cannot finish selling it, it loses its freshness. Right now, I keep my ingredients for at most three to four days in the freezer,” he says.

Original Ladle Cake, $1.50 (8 DAYS Pick!)
All the ladle cakes feature the same base filling consisting of shredded turnip, minced pork, diced tau kwa, with different ingredients mixed in for the flavour variations. Ronald prepares the fillings by slow cooking the ingredients like garlic, turnip, minced meat, tau kwa with seasoning the day before to maximise the flavour.
To make the fritter, he fills the ladle slightly with all-purpose flour batter, followed by a spoonful of fillings, before topping it with more batter and lowering it into the hot oil to fry.
Crisp on the outside, moist and fluffy within, the ladle cake is very moreish though a little greasy. The disc has a nice balance of dough to filling and is packed with stuffing that reminds us of popiah filling. The natural sweetness from the turnip complements the savoury, chewy dough, and bits of minced meat give the fritter texture and richness.

Coriander Ladle Cake, $1.50
Finely chopped coriander is mixed in the filling for this riff on the Original ladle cake. We are no fans of coriander, but this is pretty palatable. The herb’s flavour is not too overpowering, adding an aromatic touch and zing to the fritter. Not bad.
Spicy Ladle Cake, $1.50
This one is for the spice lovers. Made with sambal chilli-spiked filling, the orangey fritter is fiery. While we love the piquant kick, the heat overwhelmed the tasty flavours of the filling. Ronald is adamant about not toning down the spice level as it has its share of fans. “When we ran the home-based business, this was our bestseller. Initially everyone loved the Original but after a while, they got used to the taste and wanted something stronger,” he says.

Scallion Noodles, $1.50
This humble dish may look simple but it’s hard work to cook scallion noodles. To make scallion oil, green onions are fried over low heat for around an hour to extract their aroma. The oil is then tossed with mee kia and a soya sauce blend. Umami and aromatic, the springy noodles are flavourful, though a tad too oily for our liking. Ronald says that they are working on enhancing the intensity of their scallion oil so that less oil can be added to the noodles.

Paper-Wrapped Chicken, $2.50 (8 DAYS Pick!)
A huge fan of Union Farm Eating House’s signature paper-wrapped chicken, Ronald decided to recreate its taste from memory when the famous old-school Clementi eatery shut in 2017 (it has since reopened at a coffeeshop in Jurong East). He thinks he’s getting close, though the “style and flavours are slightly different”. For one, his chicken has a much darker hue. And despite scoring the meat and marinating it for at least 12 hours before wrapping it in parchment paper, he can’t quite bring out the aroma of Shaoxing wine that he remembers fondly.
Not that we mind – we think Ronald’s version is delish too. Each parcel comes with two juicy and tender mid joints which are coated with a nice glaze and bursting with sesame oil fragrance.