Kwan Kee Store (坤记糕品) is a Chinese-style traditional sweet desserts brand from Hong Kong that has been accoladed by Michelin Guide for 6 consecutive years from 2016 to 2021. It setups its first shop in Kuala Lumpur in late 2023. In July 2024, its first outlet in Johor Bahru opened on the ground floor of Holiday Villa Hotel in Taman Century, adjacent to KSL City Mall — it is also a great news for Singapore residents.
Since its opening, Kwan Kee Store has attracted long queues and their desserts are sold out fast, especially on weekends — I went on a weekday.
Kwan Kee Store's signature desserts are their brown and white sugar rice bowl cakes (碗糕 / 缽仔糕), which are famous street food in Hong Kong. Other Chinese desserts / pastries in their long glass shelves include water chestnut cake, white sugar sponge cake (白糖糕), red bean cake, black sesame layer cake...
... pandan cake, almond cake, hawthorn cake, jujube cake, etc. Samplers are available for trying before buying the desserts. On one side of the store is a shelf lined with various types of cookie in boxes.
One characteristic of Kwan Kee's desserts is the use of ancient stone grinding method (研磨) to grind various types of flour used in their desserts. This gives the resulting desserts smoother and creamier textures. Note that the desserts are sold chilled.
The signature White Sugar / Brown Sugar Rice Bowl Cake are rice bowl cakes. They are made in bowls by adding white or brown sugar to rice flour with cooked red beans and steamed. The resulting rice cakes have slight chewy texture with very low sweetness level and natural sweet flavour of red beans. The main difference between the two types of rice bowl cake, other than colours, is the natural flavours of white sugar or brown sugar — if you have acute taste buds to tell the difference. Made with rice, these cakes can be very filling — one piece is nearly one bowl of rice.
The Water Chestnut Cake (马蹄糕) is a Cantonese dim sum dessert made with water chestnut flour added with chopped bits of water chestnut. The cake has a glassy, translucent appearance and is bouncy. It has a mildly sweet and refreshing taste with crunchiness of the water chestnut bits.
The Steamed Pandan Coconut Milk Cake is made using Kwan Kee's homemade ground tapioca starch and has 7 layers with alternating green and white. The cake has mild pandan flavour with rich coconut milk sweetness. This is very similar to the 2-layer pandan Nyonya kueh (kuih talam pandan) among Peranakan kuehs.
The Steamed Almond Cake (杏仁狀元糕) is made using almond powder, milk and chunky crushed almond nuts. The white cake is mild sweet with a distinctive almond-milk flavour and crunchiness of the almond nuts.
The White Sugar Sponge Cake (白糖糕) is not as soft compared to other white sugar sponge cake that I have tried before — probably Hong Kong style — and is mild sweet. Those who prefers sponge cake with more solid texture may want to try this.
The Steamed Black Sesame Layer Cake has a strong black sesame flavour but not overpowering. Its sweetness level is very low — just enough to overcome the bitterness of black sesame seeds.
The Hawthorn Cake is probably the only dessert that is rolled and is one of their hot-selling items — I missed it twice after not going for it when I had the chance on the first visit. The dessert is cool, refreshing and bouncy with a mild sourish-sweet flavour. The sourish note is the characteristic taste of hawthorn.
Kwan Kee's cakes are nice as desserts and not too sweet. And, unlike other Chinese or Nyonya cakes, they are non-greasy too. The chilled cakes should be consumed within the same day of purchase. If kept refrigerated, they can last for 2 days.
Address:
Ground Floor Shop 7, Holiday Villa, 260, Jalan Dato Sulaiman, Taman Abad, 80250 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
Opening Hours:
11am to 8pm (or sold out) | Daily
How to Get There:
From JB Sentral, take myBAS F100 to KSL City Mall. Read JB Bus Guide: Getting to KSL City Mall in Johor Bahru.
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