Katong Durian Dessert Crawl for a Home Nyonya Baker

Every Lunar New Year, Auntie Bee brought a tray of durian sweets to the family reunion, and every year nobody asked how she made them. Now she has moved to Perth, and her niece Joanne has volunteered to fill the gap. Joanne bakes bread and cakes at home, but Nyonya desserts are new to her. So she spends a Saturday on a Katong durian dessert crawl, tasting and asking questions before she touches a single pan.

Katong and neighbouring Joo Chiat grew as a seaside suburb where many Peranakan families settled, and the area still carries their food. Kueh shops line the main road, with glass counters of layered cakes in jade green, rose pink and butterfly-pea blue. Many families here learned their recipes by watching, not reading, which is why tasting is the right way to start learning them yourself.

Joanne arrives in the morning, when kueh counters are full and the day's batches are fresh. She carries a paper list of the sweets she remembers from Auntie Bee's tray: a durian pengat, some sticky rice with durian sauce, and a rolled pandan crepe she cannot quite name. The plan is simple. Find each one, taste it, write three words about texture and sweetness, then compare. She also rings her cousin before leaving home to ask what he remembers, and he can only recall that the pengat was always gone before the fried chicken.

Her first stop is a Nyonya kueh shop that serves a bowl of durian pengat, the rich dessert of durian flesh cooked down with coconut milk and palm sugar. She tastes it warm, then again after it cools, because she suspects Auntie Bee served hers at room temperature. The cooled version is thicker and sweeter on the tongue. That one detail already answers a question she has had for months.

She asks the stall auntie, politely, whether they use pandan leaves in the pot. The answer is a smile and a nod, and a tip: never let the coconut milk boil hard, or it splits. Joanne writes this down. Shop staff are often happy to share a general tip if you buy something and ask kindly; just do not expect a full recipe, and never photograph their kitchen. Buying a box of kueh to take home is the polite way to say thank you for the advice.

Next comes glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk, served with a thick durian sauce poured over the top. The salty edge of the rice balances the sweetness, and Joanne realises this is the dish her uncles always went back for. She notes the rice is tinted blue in one shop with butterfly-pea flowers, which looks striking on a festive tray and costs nothing extra to try at home.

She buys one portion to share with her friend Nadia, who has come along for company. Nadia is not a durian lover and admits she likes the rice more than the sauce. That is useful feedback, because at a reunion not every guest loves durian. Joanne decides to serve the sauce in a small jug on the side, so people can choose how much they want.

The rolled pandan crepe turns out to be kueh dadar, a green pancake wrapped around grated coconut cooked with palm sugar. Some modern bakers fill it with durian cream instead, and one counter in Katong sells both. Joanne tastes the two side by side. The traditional coconut filling is lighter, while the durian version is closer to what she remembers from the tray.

Here is her honest judgement: skip the durian dadar if you are making a large batch, because durian cream softens the crepe and the rolls collapse within an hour. Auntie Bee, she realises, must have made them on the morning of the reunion. Joanne plans a small batch of durian dadar for the elders and a larger tray of the classic coconut version for everyone else.

Between tastes, Joanne and Nadia walk into the side streets where rows of ornate terrace houses stand in mint, pink and lemon, with patterned tiles, carved doors and small front gardens. These homes are some of the most photographed in Singapore, and the people who live in them deserve a quiet street. Take pictures from the pavement, never sit on the steps and keep voices low.

Joanne notices the tile motifs repeat on many of the kueh shop walls: peonies, phoenixes and geometric borders. Peranakan design and Peranakan food share the same love of colour and patience. She takes a photo of one blue and white tile to inspire the plate she will use for the pengat. Little details like that make a home dessert tray feel like it belongs to a family.

A crawl of rich durian desserts needs a breather. Katong once sat right on the shoreline before land reclamation pushed the sea further out, and today East Coast Park lies a short walk south through an underpass. Joanne and Nadia sit under the casuarina trees, drink coconut water and watch cyclists and families pass. The sea breeze clears the head after the sweet morning.

Durians are not permitted on public transport, so if you buy fresh fruit to practise with at home, plan a car or taxi and warn the driver. Joanne skips the fresh fruit today and orders frozen durian pulp later for her trial batches, which is easier to store and measure. For a first attempt, the steady texture of frozen pulp makes mistakes less likely.

To plan your own crawl, open the Karpo APP and search for Nyonya kueh and durian desserts around Katong and Joo Chiat. Save three shops close together and add a quiet spot by the sea for the break. Karpo can also suggest nearby places to pick up pandan leaves or coconut for home cooking, though you will want to check freshness yourself before buying.

Three weeks later, Joanne carries a tray to the reunion: a jug of durian sauce, blue sticky rice, a small plate of durian dadar and a bowl of pengat at room temperature. One of the elders tastes the pengat and says it is almost like Bee's. Joanne takes that as the highest praise. A Katong durian dessert crawl gave her the memory, and the patience, to rebuild it.