Sakura Bagel by Pawa Bakery (limited edition)

I love trying sakura flavoured items as the flavour is so elusive. The actual sakura flower and leaf flavour in Japan is bright and floral with herby notes. But often it gets covered by fruit flavours such as strawberry or cherry. So when Pawa Bakery, a popular Korean bagel bakery in Singapore featured a limited edition seasonal Sakura Bagel, I thought to try it and see how their take on it was.

Sakura Bagel by Pawa Bakery (limited edition)

I got lucky as I ended up getting my hands on the last piece of the batch. I must say that it ended up looking totally different from their promotional poster (see the end of the post for the photo). I had to ask the staff which was the sakura bagel because I didn't even recognise it.

First of all, I really appreciated the visuals. I loved the lovely salmon pink. I also loved how they made it flower-like by cutting these grooves into the bagel and adding some pastel pink cream between them. It is quite a sight to behold. Although, if they had really wanted to represent the sakura flower, it should have been 5 grooves, not 6. It would also save them some effort with 1 less groove. But the extra cream with the 6th groove turned out to be very welcome, as I'll share later.

At first, I had hopes that they used Japanese style preserved sakura flowers and leaves. And in this closeup photo below, right in the middle, you see little dark brown spots, some of which I saw in the cream, so I thought they might be the fragments of sakura flowers and leaves. 

Sakura Bagel by Pawa Bakery - closeup of crust

But in the end, it turned out to taste nothing like sakura - neither floral nor with the herby salty and sour plus vinegar taste of the Japanese preserved sakura flower and leaf. So what flavour was this pink thing? It turned out to be strawberry cream cheese, like strawberry compote mixed with cream cheese and pumped into the six grooves of the bagel. So I would call it a strawberry cream cheese bagel, not a sakura one. 

Perhaps they really did use the Japanese preserved sakura, but unfortunately, the taste didn't come through. Even if the faint floral notes of sakura ended up being masked by the strawberry, usually the salty and sour tastes, or even the herby notes should have come through. I don't know if the cream cheese masked those too, however, but regardless, my companion and I didn't taste any of it despite trying to notice it.

That being said, overall, this ended up being my favourite bagel from Pawa. I've tried about 4 other flavours now (pumpkin, purple sweet potato, pandan pistachio and sourdough matcha white chocolate), and this is by far the best bagel for a few reasons.

Sakura Bagel by Pawa Bakery - closeup of cream

Firstly, as you can notice from the unevenly browned bubbly texture of the bagel crust, it wasn't a normal bagel crust. I'm not sure if it was sourdough, but does look like sourdough or perhaps even donut-like bubbles. When reheated in the oven, it felt a lot more like the Japanese fried donut crunchy and slightly crispy crust, which was absolutely delightful. None of their other bagels, not even the sourdough matcha one, had this type of crispy and crunchy experience upon reheating. I also felt that it was somewhat different from their sourdough matcha bagel, because that bagel was oil free to the touch, whereas this sakura bagel left my hand oily after handling it, so it doesn't seem to be the same type of dough as sourdough. I would go with something more donut-like for my guess.

Secondly, their use of strawberry cream cheese in those grooves made it a lot more moist than their other more pasty donuts that I tried, as the cream cheese was moister. And since it was so evenly applied, compared to their other filled donuts where the filling sometimes clumps up in one part and is absent in others, this sakura bagel had every single piece coated with quite a generous amount of strawberry cream cheese, so it was well slathered in the lovely topping.

Finally, the strawberry cream cheese itself was done well. It wasn't too sweet, and it had a good balance of fragrant strawberry fruity notes and tanginess, as well as cream cheese saltiness.

So I do recommend that you try it before it is gone. 

Finally, as mentioned, this is the promotional poster. See how different it is. The lack of the circular centrepiece aside, it looked like it was sprinkled with sakura flowers but the one I had wasn't. It also looked like it might have pink icing over a yellowish-brown bread-coloured base, but again, it was different. So I don't know if it was a matter of the local bakery differing from the headquarter's formula or what.

Sakura Bagel by Pawa Bakery - promotional poster

I have other sakura snacks directly from Japan lined up, so I should be featuring more of those soon. Watch this space.

Discover other sakura or flower treats

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