KL's best cafés for desserts

On a hot day, a cendol or ais kacang is a dream come true. Here is where you can find good cendol made with 60 years of experience by Auntie Eng, who learned how to make ais kacang and cendol from her father who ran a dessert stall for decades. Today, the stall also offers buns and traditional Nyonya kuih alongside the shaved ice deserts, which is what you come here for in the first place.

At Shah Alam's beloved cake shop, owners Shafinaz and Hidzad started out as home bakers and used to supply cakes to cafés such as Sevencups and Thirdwave, aside from taking custom orders. The crowd favourite so far is the salted caramel and chocolate cake available regularly. Other variations will be out on a rotation basis; on our visit it was the lemon cheesecake with poppy seed crust jokingly named ‘Cheese Bedebah!’. There is also the Tiung Chocolate Mess – the café’s take on Eton mess – which is a mixture of chocolate cake chunks, meringue, cream, strawberries and a shot of either fresh milk or coffee. It’s like cereal, but better.

Opened by MasterChef Asia Season 1 finalist Marcus Low, MadHatter Desserts is where he gets to showcase his creative desserts made through a combination of French culinary techniques and local flavours. Go for the watermelon-assam entremet cake – a multi-layered dessert of vanilla sponge cake and assam-infused curd, which is brushed with assam water and topped with a watermelon. If you're here after 6pm, don't miss out on the hot desserts, especially the deconstructed bubur cha cha. 

While the neighbouring cake shop exudes a homely vibe with a counter packed with honest-to-goodness cakes and pastries, Dew is shiny, elegant and pretty in more ways than one. Once you’re done admiring the flowers outside, step into the patisserie and you’ll see a glass-topped counter filled with rows of enticing, shiny tarts. It’s hard not to go for the whole lot and have a happy tart party, but we say go for the Basil-Lime Tart and 100% Chocolate Cake. 

Foo Foo’s pretty desserts demand a closer inspection: Crème brûlée with prune compote, mango lychee ice cream slice with fruit salsa, masala-spiced red wine poached pear with rose petal ice cream and walnut tuile are just some of Chef Foo’s vast repertoire. The café’s menu is updated every so often and features different dessert dishes alongside homemade ice cream (past versions have seen kaffir lime, balsamic vinegar, rose petal, spicy chocolate and more). However, even with everything Foo Foo has to offer, it’s the pavlova, complete with an eggshell-thin crust and a soft interior, that you should never leave without.

Bangsar hipsters, fawning foodies and sugar addicts alike have all fallen in love with Jaslyn Cakes – in fact, let us count the ways: the black and white tiled entrance, the finely-painted china cups and saucers, the smell of freshly baked goods. It’s a small space – considering it’s a triple threat of bakery, café and cake shop. Jaslyn Rangson, who honed her craft at Le Cordon Bleu London, uses only kampung eggs and organic flour in her foodstuff, with no artificial essences and flavourings; pastries are also baked with buckwheat and rye grains. The cakes sell like [wink] hotcakes, but don’t miss the butterscotch blondies, carrot cake and vanilla bean cheesecake. On display at the counter, you’ll also find a spread heavy with banana yoghurt loaves, canelés, financiers, lemon bars, madeleines, onion and herb quiches, sourdough croissants and a myriad of other biscuits, loaves and pastries.

If you're looking for a healthy dessert, look no further than Kind Kones, the city's first vegan ice cream bar. The base ingredient has been replaced with alternative milks (like almond, cashew or coconut milk) and uses unrefined natural sugars like coconut cane or molasses. Offerings usually include familiar favourites like dark chocolate alongside local flavours like jackfruit or durian. There's also vegan and gluten-free desserts like raw cakes, cookies, breads and more. 

This happy place doesn't really need an introduction. When you're looking for good ice cream done right with full-bodied flavours, Inside Scoop churns out some of the best in the city. Take your pick from the range of flavours, and choose to have it with a warm fluffy waffle – just what you need after a long day (or week).

Set up like an ice factory with a skylight and a garden structure, Kakigōri has a cool interior that matches the selection of ices. The multiple varieties of kakigōri are all made with specially produced ice (with a higher density for finer shavings), up to three layers of homemade syrups and purées as well as unique additions such as rose espuma, Marukyu-Koyamaen matcha from Kyoto, ginger syrup made with Bentong ginger and more.

The reason we’re making numerous trips to café and dessert bar Fluffed: waffles. The waffles here are the reason for many sweet dreams – crispy on the outside and warm and fluffy inside, topped with housemade ice cream and gorgeous combinations of toppings, based on your pick from the menu. Don't forget to try their cakes too, really.

With a warm and sweet-smelling aroma that wafts out of the quaint café, Ain’s Patisserie is where Shah Alam folks go for sweet cakes and pastries. Ain bakes everything in-house; sometimes you can catch a glimpse of her baking away in the kitchen at the back of the shop. The specialty treats on display change every few days, but some of our favourites include the lavender butter loaf and Marie Toffin (also called kek batik). Now these are what sweet dreams are made of.

No café has surpassed owner Cheng’s perfect grasp of using local fruits in desserts. She’s constantly outdoing herself, churning out the fluffiest cempedak cake we’ve tasted so far as well as the elusive, seasonal mangosteen cake. If you think the much-imitated Valrhona chocolate cake cannot be improved upon, Swich’s version is a thing of dark beauty: indulgent and moist in a single bite. If your first date was sweet, unforgettable and awash with sudden rushes of giddiness, that’s how we also feel about this Swich bestseller.