Old Seng Choong Pastries - Value-for-money alternative to Teochew mooncakes during Mid-Autumn Festival season

I was craving some crispy pastries with interesting mooncake-like flavours and fillings during this mooncake season and didn't want to pay the exorbitant prices charged by hotels and ordinary bakeries passing them off as mooncakes. So I had my fill with Old Seng Choong's Chinese pastries instead and enjoyed the variety of flavours greatly.

Old Seng Choong Pastries - Premium Birds' Nest with Red Dates, Black Sesame with Mochi, Taiwanese Mung Bean Pastry, Matcha Azuki Beans and Sweet Potato with Mochi
As you can see from the image, they didn't pack it securely, so the pastries slid around while in transit, bumped into each other and flaked off. So I wouldn't recommend these for gifting, just personal consumption. They seem to have nicer boxes with separate compartments for each pastry, but I don't know if you have to pay more for those.

Old Seng Choong Pastries - box

Now on to the review of the pastries. Firstly, the pastry was overall very nice. I reheated them to get the best texture, and they were crispy and relatively light, without noticeably greasiness. They were as good as standard Chinese pastries go. I didn't notice any butter, and that is natural as Chinese pastries don't typically use butter in the pastry, just lard or cooking oil. Based on some ingredients lists I found on heir website, they seem to use cooking oils such as corn, palm or peanut, and apparently anhydrous milk fat too.

Premium Birds' Nest with Red Dates Pastry

Premium Birds' Nest with Red Dates Pastry by Old Seng Choong
This was the first flavour I tried. At first, I didn't realise that the red filling was red date, and what I noticed was an intense and refreshing fragrant water chestnut paste flavour, like a top-quality Chinese water chestnut starch cake or Chinese water chestnut drink. There were notes of honey as well, but it wasn't too sweet. It probably mimics birds' nest soups of this flavour profile. Looking at the ingredients list below, perhaps this is explained by the winter melon (which has overlapping flavours with chestnut) and yuzu puree combined with the red date which might have provided the honey notes. The French vanilla flavour might also have contributed to it.
Premium Birds' Nest with Red Dates Pastry by Old Seng Choong - filling
Almost like water chestnut cakes, there were also starchy lumps resembling taro in texture inside the whitish core filling. I'm not sure what they were, as birds' nest is normally jelly-like, but they provided some variety to the texture and were nice to chew on. Based on the ingredients list, perhaps it was the glutinous rice flour mixed with desiccated coconut, or possibly the lumps of dried winter melon.

The overall texture was closer to a mooncake seed oil-based paste, which is smoother and moister, as opposed to a bean paste, which tends to be a bit drier, cakey or crumbly. And they do indeed list lotus seed paste in the ingredients.

It also tasted a little bit earthy overall, leading me to initially wonder if there was Japanese azuki paste. Perhaps it was the earthy rice taste from the glutinous rice flour.

Regardless, I loved the overall water chestnut-like flavour from the winter melon, yuzu and vanilla. And I thought it paired very well with the mooncake-like paste and the crispy Chinese pastry crust. I would highly recommend this flavour, even at the relatively steep price of S$4.50 for the small size. The Birds' Nest component does give it a premium ring to the name as well, and it can be a good gift if there is suitable packaging.

This is a screengrab of the ingredients list on their website (click to enlarge). It's also interesting to note that they used milk fat, possibly for the pastry, which could have given it hints of butter notes, unlike pure oil-based Chinese pastry.

Premium Birds' Nest with Red Dates Pastry - ingredients list

Black Sesame with Mochi Pastry

Black Sesame with Mochi Pastry by Old Seng Choong
I thought this flavour had so much potential, but somewhat unfortunately, it turned out to be just average. It's not bad, but not stellar, and I felt the price was a bit steep for average (around S$4), given the small size.

First off, the positive part is that the earthy notes of black sesame came through decently.

However, the bad parts were that firstly, the sesame fragrance and flavour was already not very strong, as it had probably been "diluted" by the lotus paste or something. It was nothing like the thick black sesame sand found in good black sesame pastries.

Furthermore, the taste balance was not very good - there was only the earthy component of the black sesame, and almost no noticeable nutty aroma that you should have gotten from toasting the sesame seeds well. I'm referring to the rich aromatic sesame oil fragrance, which is where toasted sesame shines. This was just plain earthy, which misses the best parts of sesame, in my opinion.
Black Sesame with Mochi Pastry by Old Seng Choong - filling
On top of that, there was the mochi core, which did provide a nice fudgy and stringy velvety texture after reheating, but also ended up further diluting the black sesame flavour.

In other words, it didn't pack any punch that sesame is normally appreciated for. So I would not recommend it if you are craving a good black sesame snack. But perhaps it might suit taste buds that prefer lighter and less intense flavours.

I think they should have enhanced the sesame aroma with some well-toasted white sesame powder or perhaps even a little bit of good quality sesame oil.

This is the ingredients list I found for reference (click to enlarge). Note that the black sesame paste contains peanut oil (as is common in Chinese cuisine). Interestingly, there was milk powder here, probably used for the pastry in place of the milk fat in the birds' nest version. Perhaps they used the whole milk powder because it was needed for overall taste and texture when charcoal was added to make the crust black.

Black Sesame with Mochi Pastry - ingredients list

Taiwanese Mung Bean Pastry

Taiwanese Mung Bean Pastry by Old Seng Choong

This was a nice hearty and savoury flavour. It caught me off guard because it actually contained meat, despite no mention of meat in the name. I believe it was pork, and it's the dark brown upper later you see in the image below.

Taiwanese Mung Bean Pastry by Old Seng Choong - filling
The mung bean paste was like a typical Chinese salty mung bean paste pastry (or salty "tau sar piah"). There were notes of white pepper, but it was mild compared to some other salty mung bean pastes I've tried. There might have been a hint of fried shallot, but I wasn't sure. It was just a typical or average mung bean paste.

The meat tasted somewhat like Chinese pork char siew - sweet, honeyed and savoury with what seemed like soy notes. It was somewhat like a char siew pastry filling, just that it's drier, as you can also see from the image, possibly due to being paired with the mung bean paste that might have absorbed any moisture. I didn't notice any fatty bits like in normal char siu fillings, however, so it was a little bit on the dry and sinewy side, but not bad.

Overall, I would describe it as a hybrid of char siew pastry (or "char siu soh") and salty mung bean paste. It's an interesting combination and worth a try at least once. But I wouldn't purchase it regularly because I don't think it's worth the S$4.50. I could get 1 piece of each kind separately for under that price.

(I didn't find an ingredients list for this one.)

Matcha Azuki Beans Pastry

Matcha Azuki Beans Pastry by Old Seng Choong

This pastry was advertised as matcha, but I would say it's closer to a thick sencha flavour with possibly a hint of jasmine or floral green tea. The sencha flavour was like thick and bitter sencha, similar to the dark, bitter and woody green tea flavour in low quality powdery matcha lattes, like the initial Starbucks matcha formula that was very artificial. As a result, it was a very Chinese flavour and it didn't come across as the Japanese matcha flavour at all, which tends to accent the grassy and umami notes a lot more, with a fainter woody profile and without any jasmine notes. Think of green tea (not matcha) mooncake fillings. The ingredients list (below) explains this - matcha powder is the very last ingredient, and all the other tea powders were normal green tea. The floral notes might have come from the rose sugar in the red bean paste.

Matcha Azuki Beans Pastry by Old Seng Choong - filling

Because of the thickness and bitterness of the green tea, the red bean wasn't prominent at all and seemed to blend in, so I didn't notice it separately. Perhaps the earthiness was drowned out by the green tea, or the earthy notes blended it well with the woody notes.

The overall texture was closer to a bean paste, dominated by the red bean paste (even though the green tea paste was lotus-based), so it was slightly drier than mooncake fillings and a tad cakey or crumbly as you can see in the photo. There was some palm oil used in the red bean paste, but probably not as much as in typical mooncakes.

If you're a matcha lover, avoid this. But if you like the Chinese green tea profile, this would do fine.

This is the ingredients list for reference (click to enlarge).

Matcha Azuki Beans Pastry - ingredients list

Sweet Potato with Mochi Pastry

Sweet Potato with Mochi Pastry by Old Seng Choong

Along with the birds' nest red date flavour, this was a favourite of mine. I have nothing bad to say about it. The mochi seemed to take up a lot of space, but it's just concentrated in the middle, and the tapered parts of the pastry contained a good amount of sweet potato paste.

Sweet Potato with Mochi Pastry by Old Seng Choong - filling

The sweet potato paste was impressive - not only did it have a nice balance of sweet potato earthy notes, but there were also distinct floral honey and caramel notes, like a fragrant yellow Japanese sweet potato such as the Beni Haruka, Unagi-imo or Annou Satsumaimo varieties. I think food connoisseurs and those who appreciate fragrant floral teas would appreciate this.

The mochi contributed to a nice fudgy texture that did not feel dry. Even the sweet potato paste itself looked rich and fudgy.

(I didn't find an ingredients list for this one.)

Overall, I'm giving a big thumbs up for this flavour and the Birds' Nest Red Date one.

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