What looks like a Portuguese egg tart, oozes like a liu sha bao, and overflows with umami? If you’ve been following the news, you’ve probably guessed. From Tokyo to Bangkok and now Singapore, is anyone surprised that baked cheese tarts are taking Asia by storm?
How did baked cheese tarts originate?
Cheese didn’t arrive in Japan until the Meiji era, but true to character, the Japanese wasted no time in perfecting their own versions of Western cheese products. Hanjuku cheesecake (aka souffle or cotton cheesecake) has been giving the New York version a run for its money since the late 1990s.
When did they become popular?
Cheese tarts exploded onto the scene in 2011, when Pablo opened in Osaka with tarts that are the polar opposite of BAKE Cheese Tart’s bite-sized tarts with caramelised surfaces. Their mini-flans are topped with a fruit-flavoured gelatin glaze, and are available in two donenesses: a just-set “medium” or molten “rare”.
Kinotoya’s cheese tart was born that same year, after the Hokkaido food fair held in Singapore, where Kinotoya bakery owner Shintaro Naganuma decided to toast his family’s normally-chilled blueberry cheese tarts and they sold out fresh from the oven.
Tweaking the recipe, downsizing the tarts and ditching the blueberries, Kinotoya first sold the updated version at Kinotoya Bake in Sapporo. Baking the tarts on-site in small batches kept them warm, fragrant and oozy for the long queues of waiting customers. The massive popularity of the tarts led to the setting up of a subsidiary in 2013, BAKE Cheese Tart, selling nothing but cheese tarts.
What's the best way to eat them?
Fans insist that the tarts taste just as good eaten cold or even frozen, but eat them straight out of the oven to enjoy that sublime gooey cheesiness that everyone from French-inspired patisserie Antoinette to even heartland confectioneries like PrimaDeli and The Icing Room are now trying to nail.
The Great Baked Cheese Tart Round-Up
The ones that are light as air
After initial stops in Seoul, Hong Kong and Bangkok, Sapporo-based cult bakery BAKE Cheese Tart has opened its first Singapore store. The South-east Asia flagship is BAKE’s fifth store outside Japan and 13th outlet since spinning off the BAKE Cheese Tart brand from family-owned bakery Kinotoya in 2014, selling over 20 million tarts worldwide since.
The dainty tarts are assembled in a central kitchen in Sapporo, air-flown to Singapore fortnightly, and then go through a final round of baking here before being served. Each golden brown pastry shell is filled with a light-as-air cheese mousse made from a blend of three types of cream cheese: a milky Bekkai and mild Hakodate from Hokkaido, and a more savoury French cheese. They can be enjoyed fresh, chilled or straight out of the freezer.
Priced at S$3.50 each or S$19.50 for a box of six from BAKE Cheese Tart, #B4-33 Ion Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn
The ones with something for everyone
Pastry chef Pang Kok Keong is on a roll. After revamping the classic French croissant with new-age fillings such as chilli crab, salted caramel and home-made kaya, the Antoinette patisserie chain founder has now trained his eyes on baked cheese tarts. Since early April, he's been churning out not one, not two, but five different flavour renditions, mostly based on the baked cheese tarts he sampled on a March visit to Pablo Bakery in Hokkaido. (A cult bakery of equal stature to BAKE, Pablo has also indicated that it has plans to open in Singapore, though details have yet to be confirmed.)
Antoinette's versions stand out for their delicately flaky puff pastry shells, each one filled with a molten, creamy mix of mascarpone cheese and varying bottom layer-dollops of Madagascan vanilla; Japanese matcha; French chocolate; salted caramel; and, of course, the crowd-pleasing salted egg yolk.
Priced between S$2.60 and S$3 each. Available for a limited time at Antoinette’s Penhas Road outlet, 30 Penhas Rd.
The ones with the oozy, golden hearts
They may have long been established as traditional confectionary stalwarts, but that isn’t stopping the group behind PrimaDeli from keeping up with the Joneses. The 24-year-old homegrown bakery chain launched their take on the Japanese-style baked cheese tarts in early April, and offers them in two flavours: original and salted egg lava. The latter stands out for its core of rich, sunshine yellow salted yolk custard that seductively trickles out when you cut into each tart.
Priced at S$2.40 for the original flavour and S$2.80 for the salted egg lava cheese tarts. From all 40 PrimaDeli outlets islandwide.
The ones that fit nicely on your palm
If the early queues are anything to go by, Breadtalk is on to a winner. Like their mini salted egg croissants, their fresh-out-of-the-oven baked cheese tarts come in two flavours - original and Golden Lava - and are conveniently bite-sized, ensuring that all the molten deliciousness goes into your mouth, and not onto your shirt.
The cheese filling of the original is made from a blend of cheeses from Italy and New Zealand and Hokkaido milk, while the latter has crowd-pleasing salted egg yolk blended into its luscious mousse-like filling. Both can be enjoyed frozen, chilled, warmed up slightly or fresh out of the oven to bring out the buttery fragrance of the tart shells.
Priced at S$2 each, or S$6 for a box of four from Breadtalk outlets at the Breadtalk IHQ, Paragon, Wisma Atria and 313@Somerset outlets, Bread Society ION Orchard, Toast Box at Suntec City, as well as the Breadtalk group’s The Icing Room outlets at NEX and Jurong Point shopping malls.
