Dessert at Marmalade Pantry, Singapore
After our Japanese grill fest for dinner, we still had a little room for dessert. Having checked for nice dessert places around Orchard beforehand, I discovered that Marmalade Pantry has one of the best Sticky Date Puddings in Singapore. So I dragged the rest of the cousins over here so we could try it out ourselves. We ordered 3 of their desserts to share.
The first to come was the Caramelized Pear and Salted Caramel Bread Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream. It was a pretty dessert and I couldn't really decide whether the top shot or the side shot looked nicer. Decided to include both, so you can decide for yourself.
The salted caramel had a nice hit of salt, which complemented the sweet caramelized pear perfectly. The bread from the bread pudding was also nice and moist. I didn't feel that the pastry was necessary though. I think it may have been there for a crunch element? But it was just a bit of a carb overload. Would've rather preferred more bread pudding and pear, and no pastry.
Then the star of the night arrived. Sticky Date and Toffee Pudding with Vanilla Ice Cream. The sticky date pudding looked a little sad when it arrived, but one scoop of this and I was sold. It was perfectly moist and the toffee sauce was just delicious. The vanilla ice cream was the same as the one from the bread pudding, and was very nice. I think it may have been homemade? It was creamy and you could spot the vanilla bean seeds in it. I think the sticky date pudding could've been larger though, since it's quite small (as compared to the one at PS Cafe). If there would've been more of the toffee sauce, it would've been better since towards the end there was none left for about a quarter of the pudding. Rather than a drizzle, it should've been drenched.
We initially only ordered 2 desserts, but we were actually contemplating between the bread pudding or the pecan tart, which also sounded nice. After nearly finishing the other two and being quite impressed, we ordered the pecan tart anyways to try it out. This was Pecan Tart with Caramelized Bananas and White Chocolate Ice Cream. Although presentation wise this was the prettiest plate, but in terms of taste, I think we could've left it. The caramelized bananas were nice, but we didn't see how it really fit into the dessert. The pecans from the pecan tart tasted old, SwissBake has a much nicer version. Also the pastry wasn't very crisp and had a weird after-taste, which made me think that maybe it was already quite old in general. I couldn't detect any white chocolate taste in the ice cream to be honest. And when I ate it it had crunchy pieces of ice, so when I sliced it in half we detected chunks of ice cubes in the ice cream. I immediately called over the waiter, since that is not acceptable. When I told him that there were chunks of ice cube inside he replied me with: "It's frozen". At that point I was speechless and didn't know what to say anymore. My cousin started singing Let it Go actually. I was still perplexed, but we decided to continue eating as we though it would only be in the center, but as we continued we discovered more ice, so I called him over once again. He came and offered to change it, which we accepted. When he appeared with another scoop of ice cream, we had the same problem, but we just couldn't be bothered anymore. They probably have some issues with their white chocolate ice cream? Either way they should've just served the vanilla ice cream instead, since that was quite nice.
The desserts here are quite okay. I'd suggest just ordering the sticky date pudding, since that is really good. The bread pudding is quite nice too, but not very special. The service here was quite laughable though. Also we ordered tea, and 2 out of the 3 tea pots were leaking. The waiter actually spilled hot tea over my cousin as he tried to put it on our table. Maybe they should do something about that?