Pine Garden's Cake

I've been patronising Pine Gardens since 2005 and their cakes are great value for money. The service is absolutely great too and it's always a pleasure talking to the staff of Pine Gardens as they're always friendly and obliging. Last year, I wanted to pick up my mooncakes earlier than scheduled and the staff helped me with that without complaint. Fantastic service, really.

I've never been disappointed by any of their cakes and every time I bring a cake to a party, everybody always thinks the cake is from some fancy patisserie instead of a humble neighbourhood bakery.

Must-trys are the lychee martini cake, lemon drop (or citrus drop, I can't remember the name), the durian cake (I bought a huge cake for my dad's birthday last year and it was wiped out in 2-3 days!) and the snowskin mooncakes.

I know this is a glowing review, but hey, if the food and value is good, why keep such a good secret to yourself? ;)

Got my colleague to buy a cake for a birthday celebration and at the same time, tried some of their range of cakes.

We got a 1kg lychee martini for $36.

- The lychee taste is strong and the cake is soft and fluffy. No overbearing of alchol and I think that that is pretty alright. We managed to split the cake to about 20 people. I could still feel the after taste of the lychee even after 6 hours. Can imagine the smell huh?

I also got the hazelnut crunch and blackforest cake. They costed $2.50 each.

Hazelnut crunch

- The hazelnut crunch is as mentioned by fellow reviewers, decent with small tiny chocolate bites within the cake that is crunchy and waffle-like. The cream though is a bit heavy and it applies for the lychee martini we had.

Blackforest Cake

- What I enjoyed most about the blackforest cake is that it is not overly-filled with black current and the number of it is just nice. The alchol content can be felt but not overly powering that take the rest of the taste of the cake away. It is however, stronger in taste as compared to the lychee martini.

Overall, Pine Garden have decent cakes and at the prices, you might not be able to get the same standard elsewhere. Though it can't be compared to the soft and fluffyness of say 1 Caramel, the prices is a quarter of what you pay at 1 Caramel. So what else can I say?

I didn't get to try their durain cake as they only have whole cakes so that's what i'm looking forward to the next time round. 1kg is also at $36 and the 1/2 kg goes for $23.

(P.s. I'll not comment on ambience and service as I didn't get it myself. Hence, it wouldn't be fair. I'll leave that to the rest of you when you visit.)

Last weekend, I ordered three CMK Durian Strudels (Under the Xmas log cake promotion) for my girlfriend's birthday celebration. To our disappointment, the pastries are very hard, hard than GINDERBREAD. VERY DISAPPOINTED!!! How does this item get 'MEDIA RATED'?

All my 'BIRTHDAY GIRLS' were very disappointed with the Durian Strudel. Lousy quality of food & service!

Finally tried their D24 Durian Mousse Cake! - Value for money!

They have 2 types of durian cake, D24 (1/2kg - $23, 1kg $36 and Mao Shan Wang $48). You've to call at least 1day in advance to place order, as they won't have ready made durian cakes off the shelve due to the sensitivity of durian.

My order : 1KG D24 Durian Mousse Cake $36 (Able to feed up to 12 pax)
* just for comparing.. i thought of trying jane's cake station but they don't take preorders, the person over the phone didn't deliver good customer service and lastly for 600gm = $38. Thus, wont even think of patronising this shop since i found Pine Garden's. Emicakes will be much more pricey and taste is similar to Pine garden's.

The cake contained 3 layers of durian sponge cake with 2 layers of thick durian cream(with durian flesh!) in between. The exterior comes with a thick layer of durian mousse and topped with raspberries & strawberries. My family members are all avid durian lovers and we all enjoyed Pine Garden's durian cake & gonna stick to this!!!

My whole family loves Pine Garden's Cakes. Even their slice cakes (normal range; choco rice, strawberry etc) are soft and nice!

My recent buy was Blackforest Cake ($23) - I really like it alot for the hint of liquor in it, plentiful of cherries and cream! My favourite cake shop for blackforest cake!

Past tries included lychee martini cake but it proved too light for me, and can't really taste the liquor. Thus not to my liking..

Definitely will patronage often, and my next try will be their D24 Durian cake!

I've been eyeing for cakes from Pine Garden for quite a long time after hearing lots of raves from friends, relatives etc. And today, i went over to their shop. Checked out the map and walked there from AMK mrt station. If u prefer taking bus, you could take bus 88 from outside amk mrt station and alight at the 4th stop (not counting the boarding stop)

Its easy to locate the shop with their 2 "display fridges" and lots of whole cakes. (shopes along the stretch have nothing related to bakery, making it easier to spot the exact shop)

I was welcomed with lots of beautiful whole cakes at one display fridge and another fridge filled with lots of sliced cakes. They offer more than 15 types of slices cakes there. They were priced at a attractive price of $2.40 each, $3.20-$3.40 for cheese cakes etc.... I'm spoilt for choices. After thinking for quite a while, i decided to get 6 pieces for a try.

My choices were:
1. Lychee Martini
2. Blackforest Cake
3. Hazelnut Crunch
4. Orange zest with Chocolate
5. Soft Chocolate Cake
6. Citrus Drop

I brought these cakes home to share with my family. Greeted with lovely, sweet smelling cakes, we dug in. The cakes managed to stay standing tall and nice with my long journey home. That's something quite commendable.

Next for the taste.
Lychee Martini: We enjoyed this one the most. Firstly is its interesting taste and its is surprisingly refreshing and light. Having bits of lychee inside the cake, it adds on more flavour and texture not to mention surprise to the cake. YUMMY!!!

Blackforest: This is something which the kids didn't really like. With its liquor content and nice big berries, soft chocolate sponge and cream, its combination is marvelous. I like it not being overly sweet unlike blackforest cakes of some others.

Hazelnut Crunch: This one is another surprise. I prefer this to the soft chocolate cake. Take a bite and you'll be surprised by the bits of crunchy biscuits (tasted like coco-pops) inside. Its balance of cream and cake, not to mention the crunchy bits sends one craving for more spoonfuls.

Orange zest with Chocolate: I didn't like this as i find the orange smell overly powering. Also i didn't like to combination of the chocolate and orange sponge together.

Soft Chocolate Cake: I didn't find this special. The balance between chocolate sponge and cream was not really good. There was too little cream (the ratio was around 10sponge:1cream)

Citrus Drop: This lemon sponge cake is rather refreshing as well. Lemon smell was not very overpowering.

In conclusion: Their cakes are pretty and there are a huge variety of cakes. At an affordable price (of course, the cakes are smaller compared others), i find that its really value for money. I'll go back soon for more Lychee Martini, Black forest, Hazelnut Crunch and not to mention more flavours!!! (there are so many waiting for me!!!! )

Oh ya, i forgot to mention that the cakes are "self-service", you have to pick the cakes yourselves. Well, it does have some benefits are you are able to be "flicker-minded" (change your mind anytime to get which flavours without being paiseh). It also quite fun to pick the cakes yourselves. Their cakes aren't those very fragile ones... So... have fun!!! =D

Scoop my way to my next visit ^^

I ordered a 2kg lychee martini cake from here for my friend's birthday celebration as it was highly recommended by some reviewers.

- The staff was nice about my asking to change the exterior of the cake from pink to white (the cake was for a guy)

- My original order was a round 1.5kg cake. However, I changed it to 2kg to feed more people. (Price is $72) The staff was nice about it and allowed me to change. I was not informed that the cake will be rectangular/square until it was collected.

- I requested the bakery to write "happy birthday" on the cake but to my horror, "happy father's day" was written on it! Had to wait for them as they rectify their error but the cake surface is no longer smooth (can tell that they creamed the section over again)

- No candle holders were given together with the candles

The cake
- Exterior was not very impressive. The auntie added sugar-flowers to it (which was not shown on the original picture). While I appreciate her efforts, I thought it made the cake looked less classy.
- Cake was soft and fluffy. It is a really light cake, most people had at least 2 slices. There could be more lychee pieces between the layers as not everybody's slice contained those. The lychee/alcohol flavour was rather mild as my friends couldn't make out that it was actually lychee martini. a few of them thought it was longan -.- The general feedback was that the cake was above-average for a sponge cake but was a tad disappointing compared to the sound of its exciting name. Really expecting something more special.

Value
I was actually checking out cakes at Bakerzin, Secret Recipe and such. $72 is kind of pricey for the quality, espeically coming from a neighbourhood confectionary.

Lychee Martini.... MMMmm.....

Went to my friend birthday party and the birthday cake was huge. Tasted a first piece given to me and it was so special. Not too sweet and the taste was unique, don't know how to describe. A must try. Ate a few more piece however leave my throat a dry feeling. (like going to have sore throat) So although its delicious, must stop eating more.

I saw pine garden's logo appeared in michelle chia's wedding so i guess they must have ordered their wedding cake frm them.
It's been long since i visited them. The blsckforest n lychee martini is still my fav.

I saw some new items added-The mini creme caramel n the hazelnut crunch. It was mini of course, like tapas size n cost $3 each. I think the hazelnut crunch is more popular as there's only 1 left when i reached there. I got the creme caramel n a triple choc layer cake.
The triple choc layer cake looks pretty normal but don't b deceived by it's look. It's actually quite chocolatey but not overly sweet. Yummy(but still not the best dat i''ve tried). The creme caramel taste a little salty n i think shld be called salted caramel instead. It's light n fluffy but towards the end, it was quite ''oily'' n a little crunch is tasted-6.8/10.

Orange Zest chocolate cake

There's a storng hint of orange from this cake. I must admit that the orange cream use is very light and refreshing. The chocolate used is of high quality and i think they use imported chocolate. The chocolate itself taste a little like oreo. I like this

I hope they would continue to add new creations to their cakes.

After a meeting with my client around the area, I decide to drop my Pine Garden for a slice of cake. I see they've got this new favor, or a favor that I have not notice when I am there previously.

It's our local dessert Black Glutinous Rice Porridge or Bubur Pulut Hitam, as most of us call it, added into the favor.

Basically partially they whipped it up with cream and spreaded in between the vanilla cake and a whole lot of it without the cream, on the top portion.

Very yummy, ideally for people like me who like to eat cold and sweet stuff as commonly bubur pulut hitam is served hot.