Singapore Eat: Chinatown Tan’s Tutu Coconut Cake (牛车水陈家嘟嘟糕) @ Bukit Panjang Plaza

20 June 2026

Chinatown Tan’s Tutu Coconut Cake (牛车水陈家嘟嘟糕) is a beloved Singaporean heritage stall specialising in traditional kueh tutu (嘟嘟糕) — a steamed, delicate rice-flour cake filled with sweet grated coconut or roasted peanuts, and is unique to Singapore. Back in 1932, its founder Mr Tan Eng Huat, migrated from Fujian Province, China, to Singapore and created the snack by modifying large, plain steamed rice cakes known as song gao (松糕). His descendants run the business till this day, preserving the traditional preparation methods.

Chinatown Tan’s Tutu Coconut Cake has a number of outlets across Singapore. In the west, the brand’s outlet can be found in Lot One (Choa Chu Kang), Westgate (Jurong East) and Bukit Panjang Plaza.

There are 3 flavours of kueh tutu: plain (without filling), coconut and peanut. Minimum order is 2 pieces and the kuehs are made on order. It is a labour-intensive dessert as each kueh needs to be handmade, steamed then served on a piece of fresh pandan leaf.

Kueh tutu is usually not very big in size, so going for a box of 5 or 10 pieces makes more sense and is cheaper than just 2 pieces. I ordered a box of 5 — 1 kosong (plain), 2 coconut and 2 peanut — to try all the flavours available.

Each snow-white kueh tutu has a bright fragrance of fresh pandan leaf (not of steamed pandan leaf) as it was pasted below the cake after it was steamed. The hand-pounded rice flour skin is soft with slight chewy texture when freshly steamed and turns firmer and chewier as it gets cooler — it is individual preference to eat it hot for tender texture or cold for chewier texture, but recommendation is to eat it while still warm.

The plain kueh tutu has that familiar rice cake flavour and very low in sweetness — without being affected by any filling. The coconut-flavoured kueh tutu is filled with grated coconut that is infused with gula melaka (coconut palm sugar). The little cake exudes a nice flavour of the coconut palm sugar, slight chewiness and mild sweetness. This is far better than putu piring, which is usually on the sweeter side.

Do you know? Kueh tutu is often mistaken as putu piring, which is of Malay origin. Putu piring is a saucer-shaped steamed cake that is made of rice flour, filled with molten gula melaka and eaten with grated coconut.

The peanut-flavoured kueh tutu is filled with crushed peanut with fine sugar giving a crunchy texture to the slight-chewy rice-made skin. With roasty peanut flavour, chewy-crunchy texture and similarly low in sweetness, it offers a different taste experience to the coconut version.