Hong Kong’s popular artisanal bakery, The Forest Bakery, is redefining traditional Lunar New Year delicacies by launching a bold, innovative series of festive treats that combine classic Cantonese holiday flavours with refined French patisserie techniques. This year’s collection, available for pre-order and at limited pop-up stores, features an audacious East-meets-West theme, highlighted by a Whole Abalone Mille-Feuille Tart, transforming staple celebratory foods into photogenic, luxurious gifts.
This culinary initiative moves beyond conventional festive sweets, offering locals and visitors a fresh take on indispensable New Year foods like turnip cake (lo bak go). The bakery, known for its creative approach to seasonal offerings, aims to elevate the gifting experience while celebrating the rich flavours synonymous with the holiday.
A Fusion of Flavour and Craft: The Headline Tarts
The undisputed centrepiece of the collection is the Whole Abalone Mille-Feuille Tart (HK$68). This savoury offering features a meticulously prepared abalone, braised until tender, prominently displayed atop a buttery, flaky French mille-feuille base, garnished with asparagus and edible gold leaf. The interior is filled with a creamy French béchamel sauce combined with slow-cooked chicken, mushrooms, and onion, creating a rich, multi-layered flavour profile that marries the umami richness of abalone with delicate pastry.
Equally transformative is the Chinese Sausage Turnip Mille-Feuille Tart (HK$38). This creation deconstructs the traditional lo bak go, substituting the steamed cake base with light, crisp puff pastry. The filling reinterprets the original ingredients: white radish is shredded, salted, and cooked with premium Chinese preserved sausages (lap cheong) and dried scallops (conpoy), offering the familiar savoury profile of turnip cake nestled within an unexpected, flaky enclosure.
New Takes on Traditional Cantonese Cakes and Sweets
Beyond the mille-feuille tarts, The Forest Bakery is offering elevated versions of staple Lunar New Year puddings. The Five Times Ingredient Turnip Cake promises an exceptionally dense and flavourful experience. By dramatically reducing the batter proportion and boosting the quantity of premium ingredients—including top-grade dried scallops, cured pork, and preserved sausages—the resulting cake delivers an intensified umami and textural bite, prioritizing authentic ingredients over simple filler.
For those favouring sweet treats, the bakery has introduced a decadent Taro Paste Basque Cheesecake Tart (HK$38), combining creamy, scorched Basque cheesecake with rich, mashed taro. Other sweet options include molten black sesame mochi tarts and pistachio mochi tarts. The bakery has also debuted an Improved Low-Sugar Golden Cake, a healthier version of the traditional coconut-based pudding (huang jin gao), formulated with less sugar to highlight the natural coconut flavour and showcase the desirable ‘shark fin’ texture when sliced.
Securing Your Festive Order
The demand for these innovative, handcrafted treats is expected to be extremely high, especially given the popularity of the bakery’s previous viral creations. To ensure availability, The Forest Bakery confirms all traditional cakes and seasonal fried snacks (yóu qì) are hand-made and subject to limited allocations.
Customers are strongly advised to take advantage of the special early bird discounts. Until the cutoff date of January 26th, products can be pre-ordered online, with select cookie and shortbread gift sets starting from just HK$68. Key festive snacks, including seaweed and pork floss dumplings (zi cai rou song jiao zai) and sesame balls (xiao kou zao), are also included in the promotional pricing.
In addition to online ordering, The Forest Bakery has established temporary pop-up stores for easy festive shopping at convenient locations across Hong Kong, including:
- Cityplaza, Taikoo Shing (near the Ice Rink)
- Maritime Square Phase 1, Tsing Yi
- Hong Kong International Airport (Terminal 1, restricted area)
These unique East-meets-West creations offer a perfect opportunity to impress during New Year home visits, combining the symbolism of traditional Chinese festive ingredients with the sophistication of modern European baking.