Floral Osmanthus Pandan Cake by Chagee

This was the first time I saw anything pairing osmanthus and pandan, so I had to try. Chagee is a tea company, so they had some unique pastry creations by pairing flavours from their teas with other cake flavours.
Floral Osmanthus Pandan Cake by Chagee
I was somewhat disappointed, especially given the price point. In their app and cold case display, it is S$7.20, but for some reason they added a $0.10 charge for some packaging despite it being an in-store pick-up order, so I think that additional $0.10 is unavoidable. And for that price, you would expect something rather gourmet and certainly above Bengawan Solo standard.
Floral Osmanthus Pandan Cake by Chagee - cold case display and price
However, it was disappointing firstly because the osmanthus fragrance was so vague and indistinguishable that I'm not sure if I imagined it or it wasn't present. My companion also couldn't taste anything related to osmanthus. I think there was supposed to be osmanthus infused into the layers of cream between the pandan cake, but it was more like a normal butter cream in the end.

I DID get some osmanthus taste when I actually bit into the bits of osmanthus flower garnish at the top, but it wasn't ideal because these flower garnishes tend to be somewhat dry, hard and bitter. That bit of osmanthus garnish did have the typical osmanthus-chrysanthemum taste, which was woody-leathery with some floral notes.

Apart from that, just -maybe- there was some vague honeysuckle notes of the osmanthus in the buttercream, but it was so faint and covered by the buttercream that it didn't make a difference.

The pandan flavour was decent. It was prominent, but not as strong as, say, some of the other bakeries' pandan offerings such as Bengawan Solo. The pandan cake was also a bit more on the sweet than savoury side, although I'm not sure if that was from the cake itself or the buttercream. I think pandan cakes generally would have done better with a little bit of salt, so this one might have been better with more salt.

Overall, osmanthus paired with pandan sounds very promising in theory, and I would certainly try any other similar treat I see, but this one was just so poorly executed that it felt like more gimmick and marketing than an actual flavour pairing. And at that price, it is not worth falling for, even to try.

And well, just to show what the $0.10 surcharge was for, it was this packaging. Which is quite difficult to carry around. And if they give this packaging for any cake order, they should just bake that surcharge into the main price transparently, in my opinion.
Floral Osmanthus Pandan Cake by Chagee - packaging
I still hope to try their other interesting cake flavours, but if I also have a bad experience, I might not even bother with the rest.

Discover other osmanthus and pandan treats

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