Was picked up by my two dear friends earlier today at the airport as it was my first time coming back to Jakarta after a month of busting my ass in Bali. I was thrilled and couldn’t get any more excited! Pluit was where we headed this morning for brunch and we settled at Dad’s all-time favorite noodle shop, Bakmi 17. Gavin had himself a portion, while Nadja and I shared some halves. We also got ourselves some dumplings, which were filled with glutinous savory minced pork. I should’ve gotten myself some of the beef meatballs as they were so delightfully delicious, but I was in the mood for some pork. As always, the noodles were far from disappointing.
After we stuffed ourselves with noodles, we continued our journey to this particular coffee shop, in which Nadja stumbled upon on her explore page on Instagram, that goes by the name C for Cupcakes. Located on the side of Jalan Pluit Karang Utara, this coffee shop is quite small and compact. The parking lot was quite small as it only fit two cars and some few motorcycles. It was very hot today, so we sit ourselves inside where the air conditioning system was just rapidly blowing some cold breeze.
It took a while for the three of us to decide what we would like to have. The name C for Cupcakes is not quite suitable for the coffee shop. If I were the shop’s owner, I would go for C for Cute, or C for Can’t Even, because the food and beverages here are just plain adorable!
After taking a while to contemplate, we finally got ourselves some desserts each, as well as some coffee-based beverage and hot tea. The Camomile tea that Nadja ordered came in two cups of serving, with one free refill. I settled for the latte just because I got to get a meringue to go with my latte. Gavin, on the other hand, decided to go for the Hand Brew, which was adorably present on a ceramic pot and a ceramic cup that had a ceramic beagle dangling on the brim of the cup. As for the desserts, we got an Onsen Dog, a Rabbit Pie, and an Animal Puff.
Come on, aren’t they just freaking cute? I couldn’t get myself to indulge any of them on the first twenty minutes after they were served on our table. Cameras were flashing lights and videos were recorded because we just had to seize them cuteness for the Instagram. I was rather sceptic about the taste because there aren’t many food and beverages that taste as good as they appear. Fortunately, I changed my mind after I took a bite of each dessert.
Onsen Dog
Served in a cone, this dessert is filled with cream cheese, boba, a Shiba Inu shaped chocolate ice cream, and some colorful meringues. The boba was surprisingly delicious, nonetheless it had this enjoyable chewy texture with sugary flavor that was just on point. A bit of the brown sugar mixture was glazed on top of the milky and savory cream cheese and it was simply enough to give this dessert a very funky flavor combination. I managed to finish all of it, with of course sharing it with the entire crew, and didn’t feel nauseous at all even though it was sweet. Despite it being sweet, the level of the sweetness was that precise I wasn’t sure whether or not the dessert would taste better if they step up, or lessen, the level of sweetness.
I personally love the cone. It had this taste that differs from other ice cream cone I have ever tasted. It tasted as if there was this subtle flavor of something which I couldn’t recognize, but it was good in a way of making wanting more and more of it. It really went well with every ingredient that was served in it.
The Shiba Inu shaped ice cream was chocolate flavor, with hard shaped chocolate as its’ snout, a towel-shaped meringue on its’ head, and it was definitely as hard as a rock when it was served. I’m guessing that the staff put them desserts in a freezer so that they will maintain their shape. The ice cream was not that easy to melt, which gave me a rather hard time to scoop a spoonful of it during my first minutes of indulging.
Rabbit Pie
Sharing the same concept with the Onsen Dog, the Rabbit Pie had a lemon tart sitting underneath the rabbit-shaped sweet and sour yogurt instead of a cream cheese filled cone. Compared to my ice cream, I love this frozen yogurt better because it tasted really nice and refreshing, especially on a hot day like today. The rabbit had this pumpkin-shaped fondant placed on top of its’s head, which tasted sweet and quite acceptable for a non fondant lover like me. It had this soft candy like texture that you just can bite into. All three of us loved how the rabbit had this angry looking face despite its’ small size. It felt like as if the rabbit was saying, “I’m small, but I’m fierce!”.
The tart was sublime as it was crispy and toasty. Not a big fan of the lemon filling, though, as it was just overwhelmingly sour. Nadja and I had to take away all of the lemon filling, then enjoyed the tart by itself. If you’re a big fan of an intense lemon tart, you definitely should go for the Rabbit Pie.
Fun fact! On the bottom of the frozen yogurt was this delightfully big chunk of sweet and sour strawberry. Nadja is not a big fan of sour food, so she gave the strawberry to me, which I didn’t complain about because I really enjoyed the flavor change from the subtle yogurt to the lip-smacking frozen fruit.
Animal Puff
Depends on the day, the type of animals sitting on top of this puffs may differ. Today, we got ourselves a cute pink pig, yay! The pig had this green meringue sitting on top of its’ head with the shape of an alien-like creature with just one eye.
The puff was just a plain old puff pastry with nothing but the coconut flavored ice cream. There was this white cream drizzled with cake crumbs decorating the brim of the puff but, again, there was nothing special about it. It had a rather airy texture, though quite dense, and the taste of the puff was just, well, like how puff pastries are supposed to taste like.
Now, I’m not a fan of coconut ice cream, but this one had a different kind of coconut flavor. Instead of using a common coconut, the basic ingredient of this ice cream was actually a kopyor coconut. Kopyor coconut, you see, is a type of coconut which can be found easily in Indonesia. The fruit has a different taste compared to a common coconut, in which I can’t explain because they are as different as chicken meat and duck meat. Get what I’m trying to say? Out of all the desserts we ordered today, this one is my favorite simply because they used the kopyor coconut to flavor the frozen ice cream.
I’m not sure if the pastry chef were using an actual kopyor coconut, or just a kopyor coconut flavored syrup, but I don’t have any objection regarding this ice cream.
Unicorn Latte
My latte came in a ceramic mug with a heavy amount of soft pink colored foam on the top. The meringue was served separately for the consumer to put it on top of their lattes themselves. I opened the plastic, that was wrapping my share of meringue, and was welcomed with four pieces of colorful meringues. Three of them were just petite droplets with blue, yellow, and pink as their colors. The other meringue, which was the big one, was the unicorn shaped meringue with colorful meringue mane and a gold meringue unicorn horn. It was just too adorable!
The latte itself was a bit too acidic for me. As you all know, I’m a bitter coffee kind of gal. Sipping the coffee while bitting into the meringue was quite delightful as the meringue gave out this sweetness that went well with the coffee.
After spending some time taking decent pictures of the food, we moved ourselves to the outdoor seating to smoke for a bit. As I said before, the coffee shop was quite small, hence there weren’t many seat options that you can choose. You can either occupy the indoor seating, which had an okay set of lighting for your food photography session, or you can settle for the blazing hot outdoor seating with natural lights from the sun. I do recommend you to take the indoor seating because the outdoor seating was simply adjacent to the main road. Having car honking randomly and motorcycle blaring in the middle of a conversation is definitely a turn off.
C for Cupcakes
Jl. Pluit Karang Utara, No. 52
Pluit, Jakarta
Opening Hours:
MON - FRI: 8 AM - 9 PM
SAT - SUN: 8 AM - 10 PM
Contact:
+62 813 1587 9119
