Swensen’s launches Bak Zhang ice cream cake for Dragon Boat Festival

Swensen’s has launched a bak zhang ice cream cake for Dragon Boat Festival, which is happening next weekend on Jun 3.

The outside of the cake resembles a traditional bak zhang, with strings tightly “holding” it together. However, unlike traditional bak zhangs, the exterior of the cakes is sprinkled with gold dust.  

Consisting of a pulut hitam ice cream filling and a salted egg, the ingredients of the cake are not too far off from that of an actual bak zhang. Similar to the glutinous rice filling in a bak zhang, pulut hitam is made from black glutinous rice porridge with coconut milk and palm sugar or sugar cane. 

In this case, while there isn’t an actual glutinous rice porridge in the cake, black glutinous rice bits can be spotted against the sweet purple ice cream filling.

In place of a flaky salted egg yolk traditionally found in regular bak zhangs, a salted egg chocolate bon bon rests in the middle of the ice cream, oozing out a flavourful salted egg “yolk” when bitten into.  

In the Chinese culture, bak zhangs are usually eaten on the fifth day of fifth month of the Chinese Lunar calendar to commemorate the life and death of a Chinese scholar. This day is also known as Dragon Boat Festival.

The cakes are available for dine-in and takeaway at all Swensen’s and Earle Swensen’s outlets. One cake costs $8, and customers can takeaway up to two pieces of the cake.

They are also available on Swensen’s GrabFood, Deliveroo and foodpanda platforms.

Previously, Swensen’s launched a Nasi Lemak ice cream cake during Ramadan, as well as a “fried chicken” ice cream cake in September 2021.