Hello my beloved blog readers, so several weeks ago I paid a visit to Almond Tree, a cake store with a new concept from the Mount Scopus Group, which I believe previously known as Cheese Cake Factory. I grew up with this brand, their cakes were so close to the heart of my friends and families as they were there for the celebrations and I thought I wanna blog about my experience to their store as well as giving you ideas on how they're doing now.
Location: Almond Tree Cakes Gandaria City
They did major rebranding to the company and I must say that the "Cheese Cake Factory" trace is almost gone and it's now with a little more 'pop' compared to the simple and neat CCF branding in the past, maybe they're trying to catch the younger crowd? Not sure, but gotta admit it was a little culture shock for me, I was super familiar with the brand CCF and intermezzo to those past moments and now I have to be familiar with the new brand, but anyway, loving the new face!
For the menu, they don't really do that much revamping, pastries and cakes are still the main focus of the brand and they also have hot kitchens at several outlets (I went to the one in Ampera and more of that later!)
Freshly baked pastries - almond croissant and mix peal croissants, the average pricing for the croissants is IDR 18k-ish
Raisin Roll - IDR 15k
Tuna Ciabatta - IDR 32k, savory bites for you and perfect for the go, just ask the staff to heat them for you.
Upping their coffee game and they are trusting Tanamera to back up the coffees are their selected outlets, unfortunately I didn't have their coffee on my visit that day.
Aside from the Red Velvet Latte, one of the highlighted drinks here has got to be their Screaming Mango, which if you notice from the ingredient used here, not the kind of drink that people would commonly like, but somehow I kinda dig this one due to its unique value and funky yet enjoyable taste! It's basically mango juice with tabasco and chili, it was indeed spicy with this sensation in the throat at sips but hey I honestly did like this one!
Smoothies for safer options: Green Hulk (left), Red Velvet Blended (right)
Red Velvet Galore
Almond sponge cake soaked in strawberry syrup, cold cream cheese filling, red crumbs and dough sugar to finish the presentation as well as dressing the cake!
Chocolate Mint
I notice how they are upping their presentation game to this more modern yet artsy presentation, and below is their pretty Chocolate Mint cake which consist of whole chocolate sponge cake (with chocolate buttercream and dark crispy balls then coated in chocolate mint buttercream, dressed in ganache, macarons and chocolate art!
In my opinion, this cake is a pop-art cake, very pretty, captivating to see, asthetically beautiful (thanks to the colorful chocolate) and artsy! The base in Vanilla sponge cake with peach-mango filling and almond. This one was more to the lighter side, yes creamy with beautiful sweetness.
Spike Gang
One of the cakes that I am familiar with as me and my friends (vice versa) bought this for our birthdays but this time they come with different presentation that's more modern. This cake is basically a four layer chocolate sponge cake bith butterscotch ganache, chocolate balls, chocolate layers, chocolate and vanilla crumbles to finish!
Take this as the first part of my Almond Tree blog posts as I am going to blog about the second part of this post which will be my experience joining their Hopping Kitchen activity! Stay tuned and thank you for reading!
Teasers of the second part of the blog post, can you guess what we made that day?
Almond Tree
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