Crispy milk donuts in Taipei

These fried donuts topped with milk powder are apparently a thing in recent times.

Dough was the first stall that we happened across. We got a batch freshly fried and I loved them. Crunchy surfaced fried bread with the milk powder just worked.

Tried another one from Curly Mama's. Bread was a noticeably more dense and the flavour from the milk powder didn't taste as apparent. Dough beats this.

The one with plenty of hype came from 一脆鲜奶脆皮甜甜圈 which we found in Ximending. Or at least that's what I think the stall's called. Lacked the milkiness from the powder. In our opinion, not as nice as Dough but it has the longest queue because social media.

Re-visiting Alice Boulangerie @ Icon Village

Quick one from Alice Boulangerie.

Basque bleu cheese tart. 😬

Not as melty as I imagined but the blue cheese flavour was a superb blend with the creamy sweetness and the buttery pastry without being overpowering. 👍🏼 

Nicely done Paris Brest. Choux pastry was a little denser than I imagined though.

Not bad hōjicha cream latte.

Couldn't get past the orange Americano. 😬 While there are probably a few renditions of this drink around, this one was I suppose, a bit more......indulgent. That coming from the orangey sweet creaminess. 

Some pistachio kunafa chocolate snacks

This post has been languishing in the mouldiness of draft status for months and it's now finally in the light of day. So to speak. I've gotten a few of those emergent kunafa chocolate thingys because they're kinda in many places over the past year and also to quell a curiosity by answering the question on how these fare against kunefe.

Got this cake bar from 7-11. Tasted not bad. Not excessively sweet with a sheath of chocolate around the crusty kadaifi that's layered over chocolate cake. Texture like chocolate cake with a light crunch.

Of the three, this one by Chocoelf was the most identifiable as kunefe/kunafa. Got a good crisp crunchiness from the kadaifi and chocolate wasn't overly sweet. Better tasting one of these three.

This can be found in 7-11. Okay-ish tasting, not great quality dark chocolate. There's a bit of crunch from the kadaifi but in a blind taste, I doubt anyone can tell it's kunafa. I wouldn't say it's bad but I wouldn't get it again.

Vission, Staunton Street, Hong Kong Central

Came across Vission (LG/F, Chui Man House, 7 Staunton Street, Soho, Central, Hong Kong, tel : +852 5545 6787) while trudging uphill at Central.

Left the bakery with loot.

It happened that we forgot to refrigerate the banoffee pie. So the cream layer over the top collapsed as we unboxed. 😂 Turned out to be a fortunate accident because this tasted great at room temperature. The flavour from the cream, the banana and the coffee were all more pronounced. Fuck me this was good. 

Pistachio custard danish - this tasted like it had a layer of pistachio butter over pistachio custard in that buttery danish cup/crust. Very nice. 👍🏼

Their lemon pound cake was totally overshadowed by how impressive the other earlier two were. Just a lemony sweet glaze over pound cake. But I'm sufficiently impressed to try other things from them.

Fermented bean curd cheesecake from A.Jennbakery

Came across this local flavour of Basque cheesecake from A.Jennbakery (Kiosk 10, 3/F, D2 Place One, 9 Cheung Yee Street, Lai Chi Kok, Hong Kong) and knew we had to get one. Fermented bean curd or 南乳 is used as marinate or direct flavouring in dishes or as a condiment. Has a strong-ish heady/pungent cheesy aroma/flavour.

Nice! 👍🏼 The flavour from the fermented bean curd was present and not overly assertive. Reminded us a little of blue cheese. Loved that the cheesecake wasn't excessively sweet and had a great velvet creaminess in the interior. 🤟🏼

Doughman, Cheung Yee Street, Lai Chi Kok

Some loot from Doughman (G/F, Cheung Lung Industrial Building, 10 Cheung Yee Street, Cheung Sha Wan, Hong Kong). The shop became suddenly very crowded after we got in and started looking around. Anyways, pretty nice bakes. Corn pastry was nice with a layer of sweet cream (or was it custard?) beneath the corn. Tie guan yin madeleine didn't have any tea flavour.

Dinosaur Munchi from Munchi Pancakes

Limited edition flavour from Munchi Pancakes and the name obviously is a reference to Milo Dinosaur. I kinda liked it it. These munchis were just fat disc version of min chiang kueh with a tender and springy bite to them. This particular one was coated with Milo powder and stuffed with Milo flavoured cream cheese.

Little Rogue Coffee, Yong Siak Street

Lunch at Little Rogue Coffee (27 Yong Siak Street). These guys have been around and previously operated at Tanjong Katong before moving here. They appear to be another mostly all day breakfast-y food kind of place. This spot which they're occupying used to be Soi 47.

Not bad breakfast spamwich. Eggs, spam, hash brown, cheese and mustard. It has that combination of fat, salt and protein that made it pretty easy to like and there're no surprises here. 

From what I gathered, they're known for their scrambled eggs with ikura. Also pretty good. The eggs were creamy and purposefully flavoured with the brininess from the ikura and some richness from the truffle cream. Nice with the buttered sourdough.

There's espresso tonic here.

Maple thyme hotcake was delicious. Love the crusty texture on the edges. Flavour of the herb came through the hotcake. Think that was a miso caramel sauce drizzled over. Ice cream was Earl Grey.

Otter & Pebbles, Sinaran Drive

We've been wanting to check out Otter & Pebbles (#01-05/07 Novena Specialist Center, 8 Sinaran Drive, tel :  +65 8690 4390) for a while because some of their stuff which we spied online intrigued us.

Pineapple Americano with two extra shots on the left. Not bad tasting and packed a decent punch from both the caffeine and the fruitiness of pineapple juice. House made lychee grapefruit kombucha on the right. Noice! 👍🏼

Tried the baco mentaiko udon. Tasted much like how it looked with the creamy richness and umami from the mentaiko and seaweed. Not bad.

This was a Dutch pancake called PB & Otter. PB's prosciutto & burrata instead of peanut butter. My first Dutch pancake. Tasted much like Yorkshire pudding. So that's something I presumed to be salted maple syrup on the side. Lots of sweet and salty and creamy on top of the eggy pancake. Like. 👍🏼 

Latte with miso, caramel and wasabi. The flavour was intriguing for me in a way that made me want to go back for repeated sips. Wasabi flavouring was definitely discernible but more towards the end of the swallow and not so much in your face. Not detecting the miso though.

Otter & Pebble's soufflé pancakes are apparently a thing. Somewhat. Pistachio pancake's pretty prominently featured online. Not bad tasting also. The ice cream has more pistachio flavour than the cream. Noticed that there's another one of these with blue cheese. Curious.

One week later......

Came back for the one with blue cheese called Cheese but in Blue. The blue cheese was on the foam/cream/sauce thingy on top and brûlée-d in the middle. More of that cream in between the souffle pancakes. Blue cheese flavour not intense but discernible. Not bad this one. Vanilla ice cream on the side nice. Brown stuff was crushed Biscoff.

Double C - cold chocolate with salty cheese foam. Nice.

Capitol Bistro • Bar • Patisserie, Capitol Piazza

Some sweets from Capitol Bistro (#01-86/87 Arcade @ The Capitol Kempinski, 13 Stamford Road, tel : +65 6715 6877).

This one was call Elderberry Sphere I think. Underneath that outer layer was a sweet milky cream. Pleasantly so at that. Middle I'm guessing is the elderberry....compote? Tasted like blueberries. Nice.

Some mango mousse-y thingy. Great mango flavour spiked with robust citrus from passionfruit. Both desserts had these solid buttery crust.

There's turmeric latte. Didn't like it at the first sip but it strangely grew on me.