Chrysanthemum + pei pa koa mint ice cream + nian gao waffle ($15.30)!
Cafe Lunar New Year dessert: chrysanthemum wolfberries gelato and pei pa koa mint ice cream over a nian gao waffle with chocolate ring. $15.30.
Cafe dessert. Chrysanthemum wolfberries + pei pa koa mint ice cream on a nian gao waffle, $15.30. Lunar New Year flavours. 😋👍🏼
What was on the plate:
- Chrysanthemum wolfberries scoop: the speckled cream-coloured one, goji flecks visible
- Pei pa koa mint scoop: the pale one with the herbal dark specks
- Nian gao waffle underneath: the deep-brown waffle with the CNY rice cake (年糕) melted into the batter, chewy pockets in the grid
- Chocolate sauce ring around the plate
The CNY-flavour dessert drop is how Singapore’s artisanal ice cream cafes mark the season: take the new year pantry (nian gao, mandarin orange, pineapple tart) and the herbal cabinet, churn them into scoops. This plate leaned fully in.
Pei pa koa as ice cream is the headline act: the loquat-and-honey herbal syrup every Chinese household keeps for sore throats, churned with mint into a scoop. It works better than it should: the syrup’s honey-herbal sweetness reads like a grown-up cough-drop sorbet, and the mint sharpens what could have been medicinal into refreshing.
Chrysanthemum wolfberries is the gentler partner, the chrysanthemum tea flavour floral and clean with the goji berries adding jammy dots, the same cooling-drink logic as the herbal stalls.
The nian gao waffle is the clever base: sticky rice cake melted into waffle batter gives mochi-chewy pockets inside the crisp grid, the textural upgrade on a standard waffle and the most CNY thing on the plate.
At $15.30 this sits at premium cafe-dessert pricing, justified mostly by the seasonal invention.
Overall: 4.3 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Pei pa koa mint was the conversation piece, the nian gao waffle’s chew the actual best part. Worth the seasonal visit.
