A fluorescent green cake is now a daily fixture in Singapore. Locals stop for a slice of the ring-shaped pandan chiffon cake during their morning commute or buy an entire one for friends’ birthday parties.
The Origins of Pandan Cake
The airy, fluffy cake derives its color and delicate grassy vanilla flavor from the tropical pandan plant, which is thought to have originated in Indonesia’s Moluccas Islands, and has been a staple in cooking for centuries.
In Singapore, pandan chiffon cakes began appearing in the 1970s, according to local food historian Khir Johari. Now, the dessert is everywhere in the city, from mom-and-pop bakeries to high-end restaurants.
Bengawan Solo’s Role in Popularizing the Pandan Cake
A specific family-owned bakery assisted in taking the cakes citywide, Johari further adds.
“I made it popular in Singapore,” says Anastasia Liew, who in 1979 founded the first Bengawan Solo cake shop, a small neighborhood store. “Sorry, we’re not very modest,” chimes in her son Henry, a company director, with a chuckle.
Anastasia first sold home-baked cakes but was forced to open a shop to comply with the licensing regulations to sell to department stores. Bengawan Solo now has over 40 stores in the city of six million.
Word of Mouth and Celebrity Endorsements
Henry attributes the popularity of the bakery to word of mouth, supplemented by a dash of celebrity endorsements. For instance, eight years ago Singaporean Mandopop singer JJ Lin presented fellow judges on a Chinese singing competition with a Bengawan Solo cake. Taiwanese music icon Jay Chou posted on Instagram in 2022 about being presented with the cakes when he performed in Singapore.
The firm retails other items such as kueh lapis, a layer cake, ondeh ondeh, glutinous rice balls filled with palm sugar, and pineapple tarts, pastry filled with fruity jam. But its most popular item is pandan chiffon cake.
Last year, the bakery sold about 85,000 whole pandan chiffon cakes, which cost 22 Singapore dollars ($17) – achieving sales revenue of about 76 million Singapore dollars ($57 million) across its products, up 11% from 2023. But its biggest opportunities may lie overseas.
Expanding Beyond Singapore
“I don’t think we can grow very much more in Singapore,” says Henry. He adds that the company plans to focus on selling its products as food gifts across Asia, and hopefully further afield, by working on things like unique packaging. “In the Asian region, there’s a very strong gift giving culture,” he says.
It’s not possible to exit Singapore’s Changi airport without going through a Bengawan Solo. There are five outlets at Changi, the world’s fourth-busiest international airport in 2024, one in each departure terminal.
International Demand for Pandan Cakes
The cakes have gone crazily popular in destinations such as Hong Kong, where the friends, family, and colleagues of travelers from Singapore tend to anticipate a cake. Demand has even created a secondary market on Facebook Marketplace and the app Carousell.
Henry indicates that airport outlets now contribute over half of Bengawan’s overall sales, and its goods appear to be best received by Hong Kong, mainland Chinese, Taiwanese, South Koreans, and Japanese travelers.
The firm has weighed up overseas expansion, he states, but it has hit stumbling blocks such as high rental fees in Hong Kong. The family also does not want its quality compromised. Today, it obtains most of its ingredients locally and sources the 300 to 400 kilograms of pandan leaves from just over the border in Malaysia.
The Global Rise of Pandan
With or without Bengawan Solo, the world’s demand for pandan seems to be increasing. In Hong Kong, Pandan Man is retailing the cakes in two high-end shopping malls. Pandan cakes, and pandan-flavored foods, from mochi egg tarts to cronuts, have begun popping up in cities such as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Keri Matwick, a senior lecturer at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, who studies food and language, reports that there has been an increase of interest in Asian baking in the US, such as desserts infused with ingredients like matcha, coconut and ube a deep purple yam used in Filipino cuisine.
Matcha, Japanese green tea that has been added to everything from tiramisu to cupcakes to banana pudding, has gained such popularity that some tea vendors in Japan are predicting a shortage. Now, perhaps it’s pandan’s turn to become global. “Matcha has already established that precedent of something green is fine,” says Matwick. “I think (pandan is) beginning to shine as more of a star than it ever has before.”
