Almond Bakery (杏仁烘培坊) is a popular, vegetarian-friendly neighbourhood bakery located right next to West Mall in Bukit Batok Central. It is well-known among residents for offering a wide variety of freshly baked breads, buns, and pastries that cater to both vegetarian and vegan diets.
Almond Bakery’s range of handmade, vegan tau sar piah (豆沙饼) are paler in appearance without using egg wash to create that typical golden shine on the outer skins. There are “sweet”, “salty”, “red bean” and “mix” flavours of filling encased in crumbly, flaky layered crusts with textures that are distinctly different from non-vegetarian mung bean biscuits — and I love their tau sar piah on first try.
Top-left: The Vegan Sweet Tau Sar Piah (纯素甜豆沙饼) has low-sweet mung bean paste as its filling, and is not too moist. The light, clear flavour of mung beans can be picked up.
Top-right: The Vegan Salty Tau Sar Piah (纯素咸豆沙饼) looks very similar to the sweet tau sar piah and is marked with white sesame seeds on it. Naturally, savoury mung bean paste will look slightly drier than the sweet version due to presence of salt. Although named as “salty”, the mung bean filling is slight saltish with subtle black pepper flavour and slight hint of peppery spiciness. The flavours are really interesting and an unexpected find.
Bottom-left: The Vegan Red Bean Tau Sar Piah (纯素红豆沙饼), marked by black sesame seeds, is an old-school pastry where red bean paste is used in place of the usual mung bean paste. The red beans gives the pastry its rich flavour, natural sweetness and creaminess. Although red bean paste is commonly used in Chinese pastries, it is less common in tau sar piah, especially in Singapore and Malaysia.
Bottom-right: The Vegan Mix Tau Sar Piah (纯素鸳鸯豆沙饼) is not the typical combination of the sweet and savoury versions that one might expect, but a mix of savoury mung bean paste with sweet red bean paste as its filling. The pastry is identified with white and black sesame seeds on the crust. Aside from the savoury-peppery flavour of mung bean paste, there is also the sweet red bean flavour. This is another unique pastry with more flavours than expected.
The Vegan Green Tea Pastry (纯素绿茶酥) features similar layered crust as the tau sar piah but with two sunflower seeds on top of each pastry. Wrapped within the crispy crust is a greenish lotus paste with mellow green tea flavour and mildly sweet. This reminds me of my favourite green tea mooncakes.
The Vegan Pineapple Pastry (纯素黄梨酥) is topped with a mix of white sesame seeds and chia seeds (?), and filled with pineapple paste, which gives the pastry its characteristic sourish-sweet pineapple flavour. This is similar to eating traditional pineapple tarts, except in a crispy, flaky crust. Another unique pastry to experience.
Other similar pastries include taro, black sesame, etc — I will try all the unique flavours in due course.
Aside from vegetarian pastries, Almond Bakery’s vegetarian buns are interesting too — especially to a non-vegetarian like me who are so used to eating buns with meats.
Top-left: The Black Sesame Bun looks like a typical round bun topped with black sesame seeds. Inside the soft bun is coarsely ground black sesame paste that gives the bun a rich black sesame flavour with crunchy texture.
Top-right: The Otak-Otak Bun is topped with crispy bread crumbs and the otak-otak filling is made using soy bean (of course) with herbs and spices. It has a firmer texture than soft fish meat and with more flavours, lesser sweet coconut milk and mildly spicy.
Bottom-left: The Hotdog Bun is topped with minced parsley. The embedded faux hotdog has a firmer texture than real hotdog and near similar in taste.
Bottom-right: The Meat Floss Bun is topped with lots of faux meat floss, seaweeds and white sesame seeds. The soy-bean-made floss has crispy texture with really nice flavours. This is nicer than real chicken floss buns.
Even though Almond Bakery is a vegan and vegetarian bakery, its series of tau sar piah and buns are as good as other bakeries — the savoury tau sar piah with black pepper flavour is best!
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Address:
630 Bukit Batok Central #01-150, Singapore 650630
Opening Hours:
9am to 7:30pm (Sat till 6pm) | Closed on Sunday & Public Holidays
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