On the first floor of Tampines West Community Centre, Penny University and Fluff Bakery join forces to launch Alt-Yard, a cafe-cum-bakery. Usually open from Tue to Sun between 12 noon and 8pm, Alt-Yard offers coffee, churros and cupcakes. As the number of seats is limited, I observed that most customers tend to take-away their purchases but I could be wrong though since I tend to go there during the early afternoon hours. Anyway, if you are planning to laze around here, be warned that you might not have an easy time securing seats especially during meal times when those waiting for their takeaway orders are also occupying the limited spaces. In addition, as the churros are freshly made, you will need to wait for a while for the staff to prepare the orders especially when there's a long waiting list.
During the Ramadhan period now, their hours have changed to 4pm to 10pm and they have a new offering i.e. the ondeh-ondeh churros covered in shredded coconut and served with gula melaka. I haven't been able to try that yet so I hope that they'll be able to continue offering this even after Hari Raya,
I haven't tried all their products to date but my personal favourite so far is their churros. I've tasted really awful ones before which were cold, hard and tasteless so I was a bit apprehensive about Alt-Yard's version at first. However, Alt-Yard totally proved me wrong and changed my impression of churros with their freshly made version coated with coarse sugar and their three unique dips i.e. chocolate fudge, salted caramel and liquid cheesecake. Even without the dips, the churros tasted good on its own due to its cripsy exterior and soft interior. The sugar coating added to the texture and taste of the churros freshly out of the deep frying machine and there wasn't any oily residue even if the churros were left to cool. As for the dips, they need to be purchased separately from the churros. Out of the three choices, I tend to favour the chocolate fudge which is not overly sweet even with the sugar coating on the churros. As for the salted caramel, it adds a new dimension to the taste but there seems to be some variance in the consistency of the salt level because there were a few times when I found it a bit too extreme. As for the liquid cheesecake, it didn't leave much of an impression on me. A disclaimer though, these are my personal preferences so you may find yourself thinking otherwise after tasting all three dips.
As for the cupcakes supplied by Fluff Bakery, the flavours supplied tend to vary from day to day. I'm not a big fan of cupcakes generally mainly because of the cream topping which I tend to scrape off if it's too overwhelming so I've only tried two flavours so far i.e. the chocolate dome and the oreo as featured in the photo on the left. The chocolate dome was fine but was rather ordinary. On the other hand, the oreo version was much better with a more palatable cream topping. A suggestion here on the packing though, given the fact that the cafe-bakery is operating on a rather small scale, they prepared boxes which can only hold one cupcake each. This makes it rather cumbersome both for the staff and the customers because when you buy a number of cupcakes, you end up having so many boxes to carry and it takes a long time for the staff to pack them. Moreover, it is quite wasteful to throw away so many boxes after consuming the cupcakes so I hope Alt-Yard can consider bringing in more boxes of different sizes to accommodate different needs.
The CC has become a much more "happening" place since its renovation and introducing tenants such as Starbucks. With Alt-Yard's presence, it's a good thing but there needs to be some improvements made to the waiting time and product packaging so as to enhance the customer experience.
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