Singapore Buy: Salt Bakes Cakes & Pastries @ Bukit Batok West

Rick
May 6
3 min read

Updated: May 8

Salt Bakes is a new bakery in Bukit Batok West Shopping Centre, located opposite Sheng Siong Supermarket. The modern bakery bakes a wide range of freshly-baked cakes, buns and other pastries, such as tapioca kueh, muffins, tau sar peah (mung bean biscuit), etc. The great news is: other than reasonable price tags, their pastries are of low sweetness.

Aside from buying and taking-away the pastries, Salt Bakes also serves hot and iced drinks, including traditional kopi. Several tables inside the bakery allow customers to dine-in with hot coffee or other drinks.

Salt Bakes: Cakes, buns & traditional kopi

Salt Bakes has two variants of Carrot Cake (萝卜蛋糕): one with a layer of cream cheese and the other without. The Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese (萝卜和奶油乳酪蛋糕) is the first cake that caught my attention and drew me into the shop. The moist cake is made with strips of carrot, walnuts, raisins, etc, and has a top layer of thick cream cheese. The bottom cake is mild-sweet with the cream cheese adding savouriness to it. On the whole, the cake tastes nice and its low sweetness level is definitely a draw.

The Yuzu Cake (柚子蛋糕) is mild-sweet with a thin wavy layer on top that gives the cake its sweet yuzu flavour and aroma. The bottom cake has a tangy flavour and a texture that is similar to Malay brown sugar kueh (马来糕) but more crumbly. This is the first time I tried a yuzu-flavoured cake and it is nice.

Top-left: The hot-selling Matcha Red Bean Cake (抹茶红豆蛋糕) has big red beans on matcha-flavoured soft cake. The mild-sweet cake has nice matcha and red bean aromas that filled the nostrils when munched on. Top-right: The Blueberry Cake (蓝莓蛋糕) has quite a number of ingredients, including black sesame seeds, etc, embedded in the purplish soft cake that gives off a blueberry aroma. Bottom-left: The Banana Cake (香蕉蛋糕), with slices of banana embedded on top, is moist, mild-sweet and with a nice banana aroma. Bottom-right: The Peach Cake has a layer with cuts of peach on top of a sponge cake, giving the soft cake a fruity peach flavour.

Salt Bakes: Matcha Red Bean Cake, Raspberry Cake, Banana Cake & Peach Cake

The cakes that I picked randomly at Salt Bakes are of low sweetness levels with nice tastes and aromas — and with different cake textures too. I believe the other cakes are nice as well.

Top: Other than cakes, they have several flavours of tapioca kueh too: red bean, pandan, brown sugar and sweet potato. Coated with grated coconut, these kueh have rich cassava taste with respective add-on flavours. Bottom-left: The Tapioca (Red Bean) Kueh is a unique creation with whole red beans added. Similarly, it has cassava flavour with mellow taste of red bean. Bottom-right: The Baked Tapioca Kueh has nice cassava flavour and texture. It is quite thick and satisfying to munch on.

Most of Salt Bakes's buns are slightly larger in size as compared to other bakeries.

Top-left: The Polo Char Siew Bun (菠萝叉烧包) has a soft custard crust with sesame seeds. The chicken char siew filling is moist without too much char siew sauce and the sweetness level is greatly reduced, thus the bun is not too sweet on the whole. Top-right: The Lemon Polo Bun (柠檬菠萝包) is a new creation that introduces a lemony flavour into the soft crust, and without filling. Bottom-left: The Salt Bun, or shiopan, is a savoury bun with buttery aroma and the savouriness is evenly spread through the whole bun. It is nice to eat as it is or stuff it with some fillings. Bottom-right: The Sardine Bun is mild-spicy with a hint of sweetness from the onions.