Pineapple Cake Making Classes at the Museum of Cake & Pastry

Kuo Yuan Ye Museum of Cake & Pastry in Shilin has been on our radar for a while, mainly because it sounded weird and random (right up our street). So when one of our friends mentioned that the main attraction at the museum was pineapple cake making classes, we were instantly intrigued. We immediately started Googling and discovered that they did indeed offer pastry making classes, ranging from $150-$500 in price, depending on the course you attend.

We chose pineapple cakes since A) they’re delicious and B) they’re quintessentially Taiwanese. Classes must be booked in advance, and they don’t run unless a minimum of 20-30 people (depending on the class) attend that day. We booked ours a week in advance through their website — questions were in Chinese, but it was fairly simple to decode. You can also book it through KKDay, which is in English. We received a confirmation email the next day, and our date was set.

The class was held at the Museum of Cake & Pastry, which you can actually visit without signing up for any baking. Keep reading, because we’ll discuss the museum in a bit. The pineapple cake course was $350; $300 for the class, and an extra $50 for a tour of the museum and tea. We arrived at the location on the map and were told to go into the building next door — a very helpful doorman guided the way and escorted us to the 4th floor, where we paid and entered the classroom. Each group had its own table (decorated with our country’s flags). We washed our hands and sat down, excited for class to begin.

Our instructor was a nice Taiwanese lady who guided us through the different steps in Chinese, while a translator provided additional support in English, Japanese, and Korean. The process was very easy: we started by mixing butter and sugar, then adding eggs and flour, all under the watchful gaze of our instructor, who stepped in a few times to help out.

Once our dough was complete, we cut them into ten pieces and rolled them into balls. We added the pineapple jam filling and stuffed them into moulds. Our instructor showed us how to cut designs into them (some tables with kids had cookie cutters to make cute shapes on top) and we piled them all onto a big baking tray.

Note: they did not look very appetising at this point.

Once all of our cakes were on the tray, we washed up and were ushered into the museum for the tour, leaving our pastries to bake in huge ovens. Now, to be brutally honest, we weren’t huge fans of the museum. It mainly focused on wedding and birth rituals, but it didn’t capture our interest much.

There were several displays around the museum, but it was very small. The most exciting part was the dress-up rack: lots of traditional Chinese outfits were available to dress up and take photos in, which was quite fun because our group got way too into it. Still, we left unimpressed with the museum portion of the day.

After the tour, we were ushered back inside the classroom for tea and snacks. They were pretty tasty: pineapple cakes, butter cookies, and some heavenly peanut cookie, as well as a mango ice cream that wasn’t really a mango ice cream at all (more like frozen mango jelly). It was nice to be able to sit down and chat with our friends over tea while we waited for our cakes to finish baking.

After a while, the cakes were removed from the oven and left to cool. Once they were cool enough to handle, we returned to our original tables and started packing them up. We had made ten cakes each — one to eat now, and nine to package and take away in a nice little box. We wrapped the cakes in thin paper and stuffed them into plastic dividers, finally encasing it in plastic and sticking it our box.

We hadn’t had high expectations, but the cakes actually looked very nice once all wrapped up — they wouldn’t make a bad gift at all. And more importantly, they actually tasted good: very similar to the kind you buy in-store, although slightly on the crunchy side. Our instructor informed us that their shelf life is one week and that they will go hard if left in the refrigerator, so they are best enjoyed immediately, or up to a few days after they’re made. Once everything had been wrapped up, we were given gift bags to put our boxes in and escorted to the souvenir shop. As part of our course fee, each person was given a $50 voucher, and we discovered in delight that they could be combined, allowing us to walk away with several boxes of cookies almost for free. Score!

All in all, we had a great time making pineapple cakes. The class was fun and relaxed, and it was nice to have the opportunity to bake something — especially something Taiwanese. It was also shocking to see just how much butter and sugar went into a single pineapple cake (a lot). We all left feeling that it had been a good experience worth the $350 that we paid, especially considering the tea and snacks, and the 3 full hours of entertainment.

What’s the vibe?

Relaxed baking class offered in Chinese, English, Korean, and Japanese. There were lots of tourists and expat families laughing and having fun, and the instructors were helpful and friendly.

Worth it?

It was for us. $350 isn’t too terrible considering everything that was included, and it was a fun activity all around. We wouldn’t recommend going to the museum on its own, but the class was a nice experience.

Would you go back?

Probably not, since we’ve already done it and it’s more of a one-time thing. But we might return to try some of the other baking classes here!

Visited: March 2019

Kuo Yuan Ye Museum of Cake and Pastry

Chinese Name: 郭元益糕餅博物館

Hours: 9am – 5:30pm

Phone: 02 2838 2700#457

English Address: No. 546 (4th floor), Wenlin Road, Shilin District, Taipei

Chinese Address: 111台北市士林區文林路546號4樓