Bengawan Solo Review

Location: Multiple outlets across Singapore.

Phone: +65 6756 9088 (Main Office). Each outlet has its phone number.

Website: https://bengawansolo.sg/

Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1382976025365682

Instagram: https://instagram.com/bengawansolocake

Business Hours: Daily. Opening hours vary based on the outlet.

About Bengawan Solo

Bengawan Solo is one of Singapore’s most well-loved bakery chains. Founded in 1979 as a home business, Bengawan Solo now has 45 outlets islandwide with a factory at 23 Woodlands Link. The bakery is known for its Indonesian-style kueh, cakes, pastries, and cookies. This is no surprise as the founder, Tjendri Anastasia-Liew, is an Indonesian who migrated to Singapore from Palembang! With her, she brought exquisite and heavenly recipes that will make Bengawan Solo what it is today. The name “Bengawan Solo” was taken after the popular Indonesian folk song about Indonesia’s Solo River.

The Product Selection

What sets Bengawan Solo apart from a typical Singaporean bakery is that several of its recipes originate from Indonesia. What started as a home business selling homemade chiffon and butter cakes has expanded to a wide selection of scrumptious cakes, superb Peranakan-styled kueh, glorious cake rolls, and delectable log cakes. 

The bakery chain is the perfect spot to buy celebration cakes, whether it’s for birthdays, anniversaries, or just a treat. Using fresh and high-quality ingredients from flour to milk, Bengawan Solo’s cakes consistently exceed our expectations. With unique flavours topped with delicious homemade icing like Strawberry & Peach, Coffee Avocado, and the dark rich Chocolate Banana cake, Bengawan Solo offers splendid cakes to celebrate your special event with. For children’s birthdays, there is a wide selection of Character Cakes with designs of popular and well-loved cartoon characters such as superheroes and Disney characters that will thrill the birthday kid. 

We also need to take about the bakery’s iconic kuehs! Bengawan Solo’s kuehs are must-haves – delightful Indonesian-styled snacks that are hard-pressed to find anywhere else in Singapore. The bakery chain offers an extensive variety of kueh such as Kueh Bugis, Getuk Ubi, Kueh Dadar, Kueh Kosui, and Talam Gula Melaka. Each kueh contains natural extract from fresh ingredients and is perfectly sweetened and salted. 

Bengawan Solo also offers more than cakes and kueh. The bakery roll cakes are fluffy and soft in texture with the rich and condensed filling complementing it nicely. For those looking forward to Christmas, Bengawan Solo offers Christmas Log Cakes as well! Topped with Christmas decorations, these luscious cakes taste as good as they look and are ideal for the festive season. 

The Signatures: Pandan Chiffon Cake

If you asked any Singaporean what your first Bengawan Solo purchase should be, their answer would be its Pandan Chiffon Cake. If you’re craving the perfect chiffon cake, then look no further than Bengawan Solo’s Pandan Chiffon Cake. 

While being incredibly soft and fluffy, the Pandan Chiffon Cake is also a delight to the tastebuds. Shaped round with a ring in the middle, the brown outer layer of the cake reveals the lovely green hue of pandan when sliced. Made with whole pandan leaves and fresh cold-pressed coconut milk, the cake is rich with fresh aromatic pandan flavour accompanied by the creaminess of coconut. In fact, it’s so good that it won first place out of 14 cakes in a blind taste test conducted by The Sunday Times in 2017.

The Signatures: Signature Pineapple Tarts

No bakery is complete without its own Signature Pineapple Tarts. Bengawan Solo’s pineapple tarts are mouth-watering pillow-shaped shortcrust with tangy and sweet pineapple paste in the centre. The milky and rich unsalted SCS butter adds a subtle milk taste to the crust. To create the perfect pineapple filling, sweet honey pineapples are grated and caramelised over a slow flame. The fragrant jam compliments the buttery and soft outer crust of the pineapple tarts. A delightful treat, these Signature Pineapple Tarts make excellent CNY goodies for the festive season.

The Signatures: Kueh Lapis & Prune Lapis

This mouth-watering and exotic layered cake originates from Indonesia. These cakes are sinfully delectable – rich, buttery, and moist but not overly greasy with the perfect balance of spice. The cake dough is spiced with an aromatic blend of cinnamon, cloves, and other exotic spices. To add to the richness of the cake, it is baked with loads of eggs, sugar, and butter. This makes each bite an absolute guilty pleasure. So health foodies, beware! 

Each cake is then baked layer by layer in the oven until beautifully golden, even deep brown.

It is a long and laborious process to achieve the Kueh Lapis’ unique texture that we enjoy today.

Prune Lapis, on the other hand, lets foodies experience the same rich goodness of Kueh Lapis with the marvelous addition of the tangy sweetness of dried prunes. Dried prunes are layered in-between, adding sweetness, texture, and depth to the flavour. 

The Packaging

The packaging for Bengawan Solo’s products varies based on the product but you can be sure that the packaging contains the familiar Bengawan Solo logo and the name of the bakery! Each packaging has its distinct floral design and bright colours which makes the contents all the more exciting. For baked goods like pineapple tarts, they are placed in hexagon containers after baking. The cookies are packaged in beautiful and floral-designed hexagon tin containers.  Rest assured, each container is labelled with nutrition facts and ingredients. 

Storage Information

Fresh cakes and kueh taste the best when fresh, so we recommend eating them within the day of purchase. To best enjoy your well-deserved desserts, store them in the fridge as soon as possible. Kept in the fridge, the cakes and kueh will last 1-2 days at most. For cookies and pineapple tarts, it can last longer and it’s best to keep in cool places away from the direct sunlight. 

Ordering Process

To create a more seamless experience to satisfy your daily cravings, you can place a Bengawan Solo order by ordering on their website or calling their outlets. For custom orders, it’s best to order 3 days ahead so that the bakery will be able to create your order to perfection. You can also drop by the closest Bengawan Solo outlet to treat yourself to their delectable goodies. There’s always something for someone in Bengawan Solo, one of the many benefits of making a trip to the bakery – so make sure you take note of which is the closest outlet to you!

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Pricing Information

Bengawan Solo’s goodies are appropriately priced so you can be sure that you’ll get more than your money’s worth. Its iconic Pandan Chiffon Cake is priced at  $16.50 per cake. If you’ve got a hankering for pineapple tarts, then you can indulge in a container of Signature Pineapple Tarts for $36.80 (Large) or $20.20 (Regular). Kueh Lapis and Prune Lapis costs $65.00 and $73.00 respectively – an absolute steal given the time-consuming process to create each cake and the rich ingredients used. If you’re planning to get a cake for a special, Bengawan Solo comes prepared with in-house specialties cake prices ranging from $28.80 to $43.80, depending on the cake type and size.  On the other hand, the character cakes can cost starting from $21.00 to $80.00. If you’re craving some traditional kueh, you can drop by any outlet and purchase any kueh from $0.40 to $9.50 each. With Christmas just around the corner, you can treat yourself and your loved ones to Christmas Log Cakes with the price of $37.62 to $66.60 only.