Cookies & Fruit-Filled Daifuku at Cafe Fan

May 28, 2020 Taipei Expat

New safety measures for COVID-19: Staff wear facemasks and surfaces are disinfected regularly.

Delivery information: You can order for them on PChome, but if that's too hard you could also try contacting them via their Facebook page.

One of the more interesting dessert shops we’ve visited in Taipei is Cafe Fan — also known as Cafe Fang Studio on Google Maps — a tiny vintage-style cafe tucked into an alley off of Dihua Street. While it doesn’t look like much, Cafe Fan is actually extremely popular with locals and has been frequented often by older Taiwanese celebrities. They’re famous for their tasty cookies and daifuku — a Japanese dessert made with mochi and a filling — stuffed with seasonal fruit, and surprisingly, it all lives up to the hype.

At first glance, the cookies at Cafe Fan don’t look like much, and we probably wouldn’t even have tried them if the friendly shopkeeper hadn’t offered us a sample. There are a few different kinds, but our favourites were the snowball cookies (pictured on the top shelf of the right photo), which come in several different unique flavours including cheese and milk tea. Many of these were made with Taiwanese fruit that Cafe Fan dries themselves with no additives or preservatives. These have a beautiful fruity taste that didn’t feel artificial, and they were just sweet enough without being cloying. They have other really delicious types of cookies too, like the chocolate and oatmeal raisin cookies that we tried. They’re not the same as Western-style cookies but were surprisingly good, and made for a great gift. You can buy them by weight or take them away in little boxes.

We were very impressed by the cookies, but what really stood out at Cafe Fan was the fruit-filled daifuku ($55 each, or 6 for $270). There were three different kinds when we went: kiwi, mango, and pineapple. The first one we tried was the mango daifuku, and it exceeded all expectations. The mango was beautifully ripe and sweet and the mochi was soft and delicate, and we didn’t expect to love the creamy mung bean paste as much as we did. We’re big mochi fans anyway, but are pretty confident that this dessert would appeal to most people.

Next, we got the pineapple daifuku. This was just as good as the last — the pineapple was nice and soft but not quite as sweet as the mango, and we enjoyed the difference in textures. It was hard to pick a favourite amongst the two and would recommend choosing based on personal preference.

Overall, we loved everything we tried at Cafe Fan — the cookies were awesome and the fruit-filled daifuku was absolutely divine. We were also very impressed with how kind and helpful the shopkeeper was, which made a great impression on us when we visited. The shop itself was old fashioned but charming, quite different from the modern cafes we’re used to in Taipei, but in a way that felt genuine and refreshing. If you’re a mochi fan or are looking for some cute cookies to gift, we highly recommend checking it out!