Although Christmas has past, nothing is stopping you from enjoying more fresh and delicious bakes. In fact, there are still many people sending cakes and sweet treats to colleagues and friends to show their concern during these tough times and this is when baked goods really bloomed in Singapore. Many social media pictures of bake boxes were floating around ranging from famous confectionery to home bakers.
Really than the usual sweet treats, I was really interested in artisanal bakes so when my group buy @Tabaojiak offered an opportunity to order from Bakery Brera, I jumped at the chance and ordered almost everything on the list. The day my bakes arrived, I was elated.
I loved the little message the bakery left on the box for instructions to enjoy their goods in the best way possible.
I ordered a couple of their croissants as well as their famous cruffins which is an cross between a croissant and a muffin.
With good reviews on their burnt cheesecakes, I order 2 of the most popular flavours and a couple of fruit danish. As the ordered arrived after lunch, I kept them in the fridge in the box that they came in. As i was not following the instructions giving, I was expecting the taste test to fall slightly below standards.
I had the items the next day and since I was not following the instructions giving, I was expecting the taste test to fall slightly below standards. So first up was the triple cheese ham croissant which I heated in the toaster oven for 5 mins. This came highly recommended and I absolutely agree as the croissant was crispy and crumbly with buttery and soft layered texture and the triple cheese and ham was the jewels on the crown.
The cheese was melted so well and still pulled a impressive string when eaten.
The perfect layering of the croissant created the wonderful light and airy blanket for the smooth cheese and ham. The flavours were so on point that each croissant was devoured in less than a min.
With a fabulous start from the triple cheese ham croissant, we moved on to the ham cheese onion danish which was so prettily shaped.
The danish has great amount of soft melted cheese mixed with great amounts of chopped ham and onions. I liked that the onion flavours were subtle but sufficient to give the pastry that nice additional crunch and sweetness. The pastry was similar to the croissant so it does not disappoint at all.
My 3rd croissant was the almond croissant which was littered generously with sliced almonds on top. By now, I knew that the croissant was going to taste wonderful so I was curious about the filling of this item.
Other than the sliced almonds on the top, the croissant has a nice spread of almond jam mixture which was buttery, sweet and nutty at the same time. The jam mixture gave the croissant a nice balance sweetness.
Next was the famous Cruffin which is a like a marriage between the layered croissant and a muffin. Consistent with all the other croissant, the top of the cruffin has a nice butter flakey layered top
The bottom of the cruffin was a little too oily for my liking as the butter from the crust kind of gathered at the muffin cup and some of my cruffin had leaking bottoms which made the bottom part of the pastry wet and heavy. I ordered 3 flavours; salted caramel, peanut butter & Jelly and Ferrero Rocher. In terms of filling, the Ferrero Rocher was no doubt the best with intense and velvety chocolate goodness.
Another highlight of this batch of order was really the Kouign Amann. I have seen this many times in many French bakery but never knew the name of this pastry. I was exciting to dig in as I recall great reviews of this from the group buy. As expected, every different layer was exploding with buttery flavours and different from the savoury crossiants, this had additional pockets of sweetness from the sugar placed in each layer before baking. It is like having caramel coated butter flakes that melts in your mouth every time. No doubt this would be one of the more sinful pastry but totally worth the calories.
The sweet Danish has the same texture as the savoury one except that the layers have a light coating of sugar which gives it the tinge of sweetness. The fruits used ( strawberries and blueberries ) were huge and still juicy without being overly dried out. The fresh fruits provided a good balance to the buttery pastry for a light tea break item
I ordered the yuzu osmanthus slice cake with great expectation as a yuzu fan but I was quite disappointed as I could hardly taste the yuzu flavour in the cake. The cake was still a good cake as it has a light and airy texture but the flavours did not come through for me.
The final item on my list is the original basque burnt cheesecake although I really wanted to try the Earl grey version which was gobbled up by my family before I have a chance to lay my fork on it. The top layer had that beautiful burnt brown skin and the cheesecake was very dense but smooth. The cheesecake has a light caramel taste from the burnt top but overall was still a pretty plain cheesecake. I understand from my family the earl grey version has a nice balance as there was a tea flavour infused with the cheesecake. As a cheesecake fan, I had my fair share and while this is a good cheesecake, it is not the best one I had.
Overall, most of the items from Brera Bakery hit the right notes with me especially the croissants and I would definitely buy from them again to enjoy some of the perfect bakes they developed.
Address: Empress market, #01-05, 8 Empress Rd, 260008
Operating hours: 7 am to 7 pm
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