KL's best cafés for desserts

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 dessert menu (Vol. 2 so far, and it will be updated every three months) currently features nine desserts and five types of homemade ice cream (kaffir lime, balsamic vinegar, rose petal, spicy chocolate and salted caramel coffee), but it’s the pavlova, complete with an eggshell-thin crust and a soft interior, that you should never leave without.

The go-to for lava cake lovers, Softcore’s signature molten cakes are baked to order using only the finest Belgian chocolate. A firm favourite is the dark chocolate molten cake, elegantly plated with berries, homemade jam and peanut crumble and is served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. For a sweet departure from the ordinary, the lemon cookie, matcha, and salted caramel molten cakes come highly recommended.

Branching out from macarons, the pastel-hued Tiny Temptress also has items like bear-shaped cakes, brûlée marshmallow ice cream and lemon meringue tart. Wendy and her team make everything from scratch and their macarons' sugar content is said to be 30 percent less than big-name brands, so that's good news for everyone who's ever been turned off by a macaron's cloying sweetness. 

Set up like an ice factory with a skylight and a garden structure, Kakigōri has a cool interior that matches the selection of ices. For now, they’re churning out ten varieties of kakigōri, 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.

Take your pick from an extensive selection of cheese cakes, macarons, tarts and more. But the focus here is their signature plated desserts (only available after 6pm). Think elegant sweet treats such as chocolate fondant with berries, raspberry sorbet and anglaise sauce, or key lime tart with graham crackers, coconut cremeux and coconut sorbet. If you can't stomach that much sugar, the less-sweet banana mousse with peanut butter moss, caramelised bananas and yoghurt ice cream should do the trick.

If you have a hard time queuing up for the excellent waffles at The Owls Café, make your way to New Chapter instead, a new venture by the same team. Try the Midori, where matcha-based waffles are served with mandarin oranges, red bean cream, pistachio flakes as well as two large scoops of black sesame and coconut ice cream. Cold brews and coffee paraphernalia are available too.

The reason we’re making numerous trips to café and dessert bar Fluffed: the Pooh Bear’s Favourite. Priced at RM18, this waffle is the reason for many sweet dreams – waffles that are crispy on the outside and warm and fluffy inside, topped with housemade hokey pokey ice cream, crushed honeycomb, almond pralines, salted caramel drizzle, apricot-glazed strawberries and fresh fruits.

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.

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.

Thoroughly obsessed – this is what Rubberduck’s lemon tart made us after visiting their little nook opposite Don Warong in Plaza Damas. Seeking a lemon tart with respectable curd is as laborious as finding a siu yuk skin that actually crackles, but this tart of gold at Rubberduck sings with zesty, lemony notes. Thank co-owners Kat and Lin, who also perfected beetroot chocolate cakes, macarons, mango and chia seed pudding as well as fluffy madeleines.

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.

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.