Singapore’s “First Fully Keto Bakery” Opens Cute Cafe, Offers Ketogenic Thai Milk Tea With Jelly

Previously, Seriously Keto bakery shared a kitchen with The Happy Pancake Café (now known as Café O One) at Orchard Central and only took online orders for self-collection or delivery. While the shiny new premises at Seah Street still mainly caters to pre-orders, on-site purchase is also available, while stock lasts. All of the goodies are packaged for takeaway, but you can savour them in-store at the stools and sofa too.

All the offerings here are low carb, gluten-free and contain zero sugar, which means they are suitable for folks who are on keto/paleo diets, and who are diabetic and gluten-senstive. On top of the usual desserts, there are new savoury offerings such as garlic pretzels and ricotta spinach quiche. There’re also new sweets and a keto-compliant Thai iced tea with jelly. Besides ready-to-eat stuff, there’s now a section selling raw ingredients like medium-chain triglycerides Oil ($16/100ml) and Activated Charcoal ($10/item) for you to take home and cook with.

For the uninitiated, the keto diet was the most Googled diet in 2018. It requires you to drastically cut down on carbohydrates and sugars so that the body goes into “ketosis”, where it burns stored fat as a source of fuel in the absence of carbs. You’re allowed just 5 percent of carbohydrates in your diet (many foods, including broccoli contain small amounts of carbs) and the majority of your calories are supposed to be derived from fat. This means many fruits, sugar and starchy stuff like rice, bread, potatoes and beans are off-limits. It’s a tough diet to follow. However, at Seriously Keto, the bakes are low-carb rather than no-carb since ingredients like the almond meal in the cakes contain a small amount of carbohydrates, though they fall within the range allowed in the keto diet. And we enjoyed the breads and spreads when we reviewed the offerings at the online bakery.

Seriously Keto was founded by Indonesian-born Singapore PR Janti Joso Brasali, 53. The avid home baker set up the bakery after being unable to find good keto-friendly sweets on the market. After going on the keto diet herself, she has maintained her weight loss of 4 kilos to date. Janti calculates the nutritional value of the ingredients used in her bakes to ensure compliance with keto restrictions.

Scroll down to check out her new offerings.

Made from almond flour, psyllium husk, naturally activated charcoal which apparently aids digestion and black sesame seeds, each “earthy” bun contains just contains 3.23g of carbohydrates. For comparison, according to the Health Promotion Board, a regular bun contains approximately 20g to 30g of carbs.

Usually, condensed milk is a no-no for both keto-dieters and diabetics due to its sugary nature. However, the sugar in this creamy spread has been replaced by erythritol, a diabetic- and keto-friendly low-calorie natural sweetener created when a type of yeast ferments glucose from corn or wheat starch. This gooey spread made with dairy creamer is meant to be slathered on bread, but apparently, it tastes so much like regular condensed milk that customers have added it to their teas at home.

This loaf made with almond flour, butter, almond milk and flaxseed milk is kinda like banana bread, but with a savoury rosemary flavour. Pair it with the condensed milk spread, or keto kaya, peanut butter and forest fruit jam.

Almond flour pretzels topped with chopped garlic, like a way healthier keto version of Auntie Anne’s offerings. But unlike a regular Auntie Anne salted pretzel that has about 65g of carbs each (according to the nutritional value on their website), this one contains just 4.9g.

The star of this crumbly “deconstructed cupcake” (you’re presented with the puffy sawn-off tops with a hollowed out middle) is the rich pecan cream in the centre. The cake is made with almond flour and a sugar replacement.

There’s also the C’mon Cinnamon! ($5.20/pc), which substitutes the pecan with a cinnamon filling, while the You Make My World Spin-ach ($6.90/pc), is a savoury quiche filled with, yes, spinach and cheese. What's with all the cheesy monikers?

Finally, you can wash down your baked goods with a sweet “KetoKwencher” made from the famously robust Cha Tra Mue Thai tea mix, garnished with bits of handcrafted konjac jelly (what you'll find in low-carb Japanese shirataki noodles). The tea is sweetened with keto-compliant erythritol and creamer instead of higher calorie regular sugar and condensed milk. Sweet.

The new bakes are currently only available via walk-ins, while stocks last. Online orders will be available end Sept.

Seriously Keto is at 32 Seah St, S188388. Open daily except Sun at 10.30am to 6.30pm. $8 per delivery; free delivery for orders above $80. Tel: 9838-4047. https://seriouslyketo.com