Delicious cakes and pastries from Good Ground Bakery @ SS17, Subang Jaya

Good Ground Bakery is a hidden gem in Subang Jaya which make good pastries, cakes and biscuits. This is not a cafe but cater more to wholesale market and for take away. However, customers can still opt to sit at the one long table to enjoy their freshly baked goodies. The bakery concept is using natural and healthier ingredients and less sugar.

Taste:9/10(Delicious. I like their banana cake and the flour less chocolate brownie with walnut. Both are outstanding and taste very good. The chocolate is melt in your mouth type and the banana cake using real pisang berangan. One of my friend said the banana cake taste like cecodok pisang. Its somehow 70% true but this cecodok is healthier, tastier and lesser oil plus quite filling. I also tried their mushroom quiche which is good but the scones need some improvement).
Price:6/10(Reasonable. The price is quite reasonable with banana cake at MYR6.00 for a thick slice and MYR36.00 for whole loaf. Flour less brownie at MYR13, mushroom onion quiche at MYR8.00).


Good Ground Bakery make their items in small batches and using good quality ingredients. Using real butter and taste real good too.

This flour less brownie with walnut is outstanding. Suitable for those looking for gluten free dessert.

Mushroom onion quiche are good as well.

Huge scone but taste wise still need some improvement.

Didn't brought this but from the chocolate look, it will somehow feel like it will melts in your mouth too.

The only available long table if you would like to have your cakes or pastries here.

Simple shop and don't expect to dine here. Cater for take away.

Take away banana cake to enjoy it with family. Looks at the texture. Using real pisang berangan.

GPS/Coordinate: 3.073805, 101.579735

Address: No. 143, Jalan SS17/1A, Subang Jaya, Selangor
Opening hours: 10.30am to 7.00pm
Closed on Sunday and Monday.

Wonderful cannoli from Mike's Pastry @ North End, Boston

Before this, I don't even know what cannoli is. My impression was cannoli is a small sized pastry but Mike's version was huge. Now I know why people willing to wait in long queue just to have their favourite cannoli after I tasted it. The worst thing about this place is to decide on which cannoli that you want! Mike Pastry has so many varieties. Do take note that this is a cash only establishment.

Taste:8/10(Good. The cannolis here are huge! The filling is silky and fluffy. The shell is perfectly crunchy and they have a huge varieties of flavors to choose from. I picked the caramel pecan cannoli since I like pecan and sweet stuff. I love the taste of Mike's cannoli once I have a bite of it. Its not overly sweet but its filling).
Price:5/10(Reasonable. Each cannoli priced at USD4.00).


When you arrive to Mike's Pastry shop, do go into the shop and check out. The line looks long but actually there are many lines at the front of the counters.

Variety of cannolis displayed at the top.

Variety of cannolis. In this picture, you can see the chocolate chip and pistachio cannolis.

Pecan caramel.

Since the shop is so crowded, I have to eat the cannoli at the nearby park.

Mike's Pastry shop in North End Boston.

GPS/Coordinate: 42.364238, -71.054271
Address: 300 Hanover St, Boston, MA 02113, United States.
Public transport: Haymarket station via light rail/subway-orange line/bus.

Tartine Bakery @ San Francisco, USA

Tartine Bakery is popular in San Francisco due to its delicious bread pudding tart. The queue in to this cafe can get quite long at certain time of the day and based on the line we expect this shop to serve good stuff. We went to this bakery as recommended by the tour that I join the day before. We ordered bread pudding and tea cake. However, we expect the food to be better. The large portion in this cafe is huge and served in bowl. Please don't order large if you don't have big appetite as you may notice the price difference between regular and large size is small.

Taste:7/10(Moderate. The main attraction to this bakery shop is their bread pudding and cakes. However, I found their bread pudding is a bit soggy but taste wise is good. Their hot chocolate is diluted and don't have much chocolate taste and more of milk taste. The cake were a bit dry and taste just normal).
Price:5/10(Near expensive. Hot chocolate at USD4.00 for large, brioche bread pudding with seasonal fruit bowl at USD7.00 and slice of zucchini tea cake at USD4.00).


Four choices of tea cakes.

Busy environment in Tartine Cafe.


Brioche bread pudding with seasonal fruit bowl. Contains peach when we had it in september.

Zucchini tea cake contains apricot and walnuts.

Hot chocolate in bowl. I found this hot chocolate is diluted.

GPS/Coordinate: 37.761451, -122.424347
Address: 600 Guerrero St, San Francisco, California 94110, United States.
Public transport: BART 16th Mission station or Bus 14, 33 or 49 stop at 18 Street & Mission Street.

Gartien Pineapple Cake from Penang and Mid Autumn Festival Promotion

Gartien is located just right opposite of Komtar and easily accessible via Jalan Burma. The new HQ is located next to Kek Seng Coffee Shop. What is so special about Gartien pineapple cake? Gartien version of pineapple cake is rolled up in a rectangular pillow of buttery pastry dough encasing pineapple filling. Everything here is natural and the filling in this pineapple cake is 100% freshly harvested pineapple that has been purposely cut into bite size chunks rather than machine mashed pineapple. At Gartien, the pineapples are hand cut into smaller pieces which is a time consuming process but needed to retain its distinctive texture and taste. They are cooked for 12 hours until they turn into luxurious golden brown. Then the shortbread pastry which is made from pure butter wrap over generous portion of the pineapple fillings and lastly baked to perfection. Who said we don't have great made in Malaysia pineapple cake? Now you can get it from Penang rather than from Taiwan. Do drop by their shop or you can even order it via their website at www.gartien.com.

Gartien only use all natural ingredients(flour, pure butter, egg, milk powder, raw sugar, honey and cooked fresh pineapple) and without preservative or artificial flavoring. Therefore the cake can only be kept for about 28 days in the packaging.

Taste:8/10(Good. The pineapple texture were good with chunky pineapple fillings and not too sweet. A healthy snack option as pineapple contains high minerals and fiber).
Price:6/10(Moderate. Each box have 10 individually packed cake priced at MYR45.00).


Nice Gartien pineapple cake packaging reached my door step. This is the exclusively packed Gartien Pineapple Cake. Suitable to be given as gift.

Cartoonish box which sure bring cheers to children during mid-autumn festival.

Nice and neat packaging. It comes in a box of 10 and each cake is individually packed.

Gartien, famous pineapple cake shop in Penang. Each pieces is wrapped with Japanese washi paper to preserve its freshness.

Penang is a bit far for me to travel to buy the Pineapple cake. Its great that they have fast delivery service within Peninsular Malaysia. You can order via phone or online.

Gartien pineapple cake were baked to golden brown colour with soft and buttery flavour.

Pineapple cake texture. Recommended to have this with tea or coffee. Because the ingredients are all natural, the filling is very fresh and you can really chew on the little chunks of pineapples.

The pineapple were cooked for 12 hours to give the perfect golden brown colour.

What's great about this pineapple cake is the taste is not overly sweet. Suitable as gift for the elderly too.

This year mid autumn festival packaging is using purple colour concept.

Do bring your parking ticket to the shop to entitle free parking.

TAKE NOTE ON THE PROMOTION FOR THE MID AUTUMN
1. Booking order BEFORE 4 AUGUST 2014 for 5 boxes and above will be entitled to A BOX FREE.
2. Booking order AFTER 4 AUGUST 2014 (upon availability) for 10 boxes and above will be entitled to A BOX FREE.
3. The selling price per box with 10 pieces of pineapple cakes is RM45 (self collect only). A fix courier charge of RM10 & RM40 will be applicable to all deliveries within Peninsular Malaysia & East Malaysia respectively.

GPS/Coordinate: 5.416298, 100.329380
Address: 380, Jalan Penang, 10000 Penang, Malaysia (next to Kek Seng Coffee Shop)
Contact: +604-229 0068
Website: www.gartien.com
Email: info@gartien.com
Facebook: www.fb.gartien.com/
Business Hours: 9.00am-6.00pm daily

Goodilocks from Philippines

Those who visited Philippines sure know what is the items to bring back home. Yes, its their dried 7D mango. The 7D dried mango is not too sweet or too dry it is just perfect. However this product is suitable for those who like sour product. I found another items which is quite delicious from Philippines. Its their polvoron (a kind of heavy, soft and crumbly shortbread).

The famous brand for polvoron is Goldilocks. You can get this brand nearly every corner in Makati, Manila. They not only produce polvoron but also quite a variety of bread and cakes and some of the outlets even functions as a cafe. Their bread and cakes are quite good too.

Taste:8/10(Delicious polvoron. Sweet shortbread).
Price:Each polvoron cost around 104 Peso - 174 Peso depends on flavour).


Cashew polvoron.

Pinipig (rice crisp) polvoron. Not pig of course.

Classic polvoron which has a strong milky taste.

This is how it look like when unpacked.

Cheese bun.

Delicious moist chocolate cake.

One of the Goldilocks outlet in Makati.

Secret Recipe Oreo cheese cake

This cake is consist of frozen cream cheese with loads of crushed Oreo biscuits. My colleagues brought this cake to celebrate my birthday and another colleague which falls on the same month. One funny thing about this cake is that my colleague instruct the Secret Recipe staff to write "AH-BOON AH-CHUAN" on the cake. Then my another collegue dropped the cake and caused the cake writing to become "AH-BOON AH-CHUA" because the letter "N" sticked to the cake box. Then my colleague able to fix the cake writing after they showed me the cake. It supposed to be "AH-BON AH-CHUAN". That's why you can see that the cake letter "N" is not nice. Put back the "N" and throw one "O" out.

Taste:7/10(Moderate. The bottom of the cake contain the crushed Oreo biscuit which is crunchy. The cake is creamy and sticky with strong cheese flavour).
Price:5/10(Moderate. Weight around 1.4kg will set you back RM70).


Oreo chocolate cake.

p/s: Thank you everyone who brought me this cake for Bon and my birthday.

Chocolate Indulgence from Secret Recipe

Secret recipe is famous for its cheese cakes. But for me they got one cake that taste the best. Chocolate indulgence. It has many layers of different kinds of chocolate.

Taste:9/10(Nice cream chocolate cake. I already bored with moist chocolate cake).
Price:4/10(Near expensive. Priced at RM6.30 per slice).


Chocolate Indulgence.

Lavender Cake

My colleague brought a blueberry cheese cake from Pavilion Lavender to celebrate our manager's birthday. We are successful in organizing this surprise party. But the cake is rather small in size. I definately don't expect the cake to be that small and to be shared to the whole IT department!

Taste: 8/10(good)
Price: 3/10(expensive for the size)


Cheese cake for our manager