Love bubble tea and pineapple tarts? Well, 7-Eleven Singapore is now selling a limited-edition Bubble Milk Tea Cake (similar to a pineapple cake) from Taiwanese brand, CoolMix. Apparently, CoolMix has won the two-star Superior Taste Award in 2018 from the International Taste Institute in Brussels for its Chia Seed and Black Sesame Soda Crackers. It was also awarded the Monde Selection Gold Award 2019 from the International Quality Institute in Brussels for its Dark Chocolate & Floss Rolls. So, we have high hopes for this bubble tea number.

Each box comes with five pieces of the cube-shaped cake wrapped in golden foil packets. According to the Chinese text on the box, the pastry is made with an “improved pineapple tart pastry recipe”, and uses “fresh eggs and high quality butter” with earl grey tea powder added to the mix. Instead of the usual pineapple jam filling, this is stuffed with nata de coco “pearls” that are black (not brown) sugar flavoured.

Each cube looks like a miniature version of SunnyHills’ pineapple tarts. Held between our fingers, it has a crumbly texture and is strangely firm, like an overcooked brownie. Upon first bite, the pastry disintegrates into powdery bits, which hardly tastes of earl grey tea or buttery tart pastry. Instead of the sumptuously thick layer of filling shown on the packaging, we are rewarded with a thin jelly-like layer of chewy filling which has a nice caramelly flavour from the black sugar, but also strangely tastes a little like raisins (the ingredient list has radish gourd on it, weird). The nato de coco filling isn’t as “QQ” as true tapioca pearls, but still provides a fun chewy texture that helped offset the dry pastry somewhat.

We had high hopes for this, but while the caramelly, chewy filling was decent, the pastry was dry and didn’t have much tea flavour to speak of. We suppose it'll make quite a fun gift for kids during this Chinese New Year period. But we'd rather you save the calories for an actual cup of bubble tea or pineapple cake/tart instead.