Forget guilty pleasures, guilt-free desserts are the flavour of the moment

SINGAPORE – Can you have your cake and eat it too? The owners of three food businesses say it is possible. Two of them started off catering to people with specific dietary requirements, but ended up appealing to a broader swathe of customers.

Vegan cafe Lilac Oak gets young customers with food allergies by offering vegan ice cream and waffles they can enjoy.

Word about Ketojiak’s sugar-free, low-carb ice cream has spread beyond the community of folks following a ketogenic diet. Diabetics and cancer patients weaning off sugar are enjoying its desserts.

And the newest brand of the three, Tofu G, sees potential in offering tofu gelato to people wanting guilt-free desserts. It plans to open multiple stores in Singapore and take the brand overseas.

Tofu G: For healthy hedonists

Where: 02-21 Mandarin Gallery, 333A Orchard Road
Open: 11am to 10pm daily
Info: Call 8970-6493; go to @tofug.sg on Instagram

The wooden tables, chairs and doors, and linen and cotton fabrics give off that rustic-sleek Korean vibe. But Tofu G, which opened at Mandarin Gallery in June 2025, is a brand born in Singapore.

The tofu gelato business is part of the Initia Group, which runs food businesses such as Korean steak house Drim and Modu Samgyetang at Mandarin Gallery, and Song Gye Ok, a Korean grilled chicken restaurant in Telok Ayer.

Its Korean chief executive Luke Yi, 50, says he wanted to create a healthy yet indulgent dessert option. Tofu G’s gelato is made with tofu imported from South Korea. Its Original Tofu Gelato, High Protein Tofu Gelato and Black Sesame Gelato ($8 a scoop) are entirely plant-based.

A 130g scoop of the Original Tofu Gelato has about 185 calories, 10g of protein, 5g of fat, 23g of carbohydrates and 13g of sugars.

It has vegetarian-friendly gelato too, made with dairy milk – Chodang Sweet Corn, Korean Sweet Potato and Pistachio ($8 a scoop).

The corn, sesame seeds and sweet potatoes are sourced from South Korea, and the pistachios come from Italy.

Mr Yi says: “While Singapore has a rich soy tradition, we saw an opportunity to bring something refreshingly different – gelato that marries the clean, wholesome nature of tofu with indulgent creaminess.”

So far, he says, the store has drawn a mix of locals and tourists of all ages, vegans, foodies and people interested in wellness.

He sees potential in the brand and has big plans for it.

The store at Mandarin Gallery is a pop-up and will move to a more permanent space within the mall in September.

By the end of 2025, he will open Tofu G’s flagship store in the Central Business District, with more room to expand its menu beyond the single scoops it currently serves. In the pipeline are offerings such as tofu tiramisu and pudding.

Mr Yi’s plan is to open more than 10 stores in Singapore over the next two years.

Tofu G is also opening abroad. He has been fielding inquiries and is planning to open stores in Malaysia in 2025, and in the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia in 2026.

The brand seems to be tapping into that eternal search for healthy indulgences.

Mr Yi says of his target market: “These are people who, even after a workout or in the middle of a busy day, still crave a delicious reward. We give them exactly that, a guilt-free indulgence that sparks conversation and offers a unique gelato experience they can truly feel good about.”

Ketojiak: Dessert without the sugar spike

Where: 01-313, Block 44 Owen Road
Open: 12.30 to 5pm (Mondays to Thursdays), 12.30 to 10pm (Fridays to Sundays)
Info: The cafe is closed for a break. Check its Instagram account @ketojiak for when it will reopen

In 2020, during a medical check-up, Mr Galvin Sng’s doctor told him he was in danger of developing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The 43-year-old, who was then working as a family life educator in a voluntary welfare organisation, decided to go on a ketogenic diet, which is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate way of eating.

He had lost 20kg on the low-carb Atkins diet just before national service, but some of the weight had crept back on because, he says, of his sedentary lifestyle.

This time, he found a lot more support online and on social media from like-minded people.

“They would share what they eat,” he says. “I still wanted good desserts, but the sugar-free ice cream brands out there didn’t cut it for me.”

Neither did online recipes for keto-friendly ice cream.

So, he started tinkering on his own, using a Cuisinart ice cream machine with a one-litre capacity, until his homemaker-wife Charmaine, 41, gave the thumbs up to his chocolate ice cream.

He started selling his ice cream online. Those early customers were almost all from the keto diet community. But their family members were helping themselves to the keto-friendly ice cream, not knowing it was any different from regular ice cream.

He quit his job in 2023 to develop Ketojiak and opened the cafe in 2024.

The low-carb and sugar- and gluten-free ice cream is made with cream and sweetened with a mix of allulose and monkfruit, both zero-calorie sweeteners.

He also has dairy-free flavours, made with coconut cream or almond milk. Most of the 50 flavours he has on rotation clock in at under 200 calories per 100g.

Flavour options include Chewy Nama Chocolate, Salted Caramel, Bangkit Gula Melaka, Nonya Kaya, Ispahan and Butterscotch Macadamia.

Scoops are priced at $5.80 or $6.80 each. Ketojiak also offers flourless waffles ($9.50), made with protein powder and eggs.

The 12-seat cafe attracts people beyond the keto community. Dessert-loving people in their 20s and 30s turn up to eat with friends, then buy home pints of his ice cream for their parents and grandparents.

Diabetics, and cancer patients weaning off sugar, are also his customers. Some of them wear CGMs, or continuous glucose monitors, which track their blood sugar levels throughout the day.

“I always see a lot of happy faces,” he says. “They show me the readings on their app. They are expecting to see a rise in blood sugar when they eat the ice cream, but there are no spikes.”

Customers have been known to buy pints of his ice cream and drive them back to Kuala Lumpur.

“I didn’t foresee doing this as a business,” the father of a 12-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl says. “My view on the keto diet was that people go on it for aesthetic reasons, to lose weight, and it was too niche to build a business on.”

But later in 2025, he is moving Ketojiak to a bigger and more central location, so customers can get to him more easily, and he can attract new ones.

“Our time here tells us this is a concept that works,” he says. “I’m not building a niche business. This is an ice cream shop that just happens to be diabetic-friendly.”

Lilac Oak: Baby boss diners

Where: 01-01 The Rise @ Oxley, 71 Oxley Rise
Open: 11am to 4pm (Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays), 11am to 6pm (Fridays to Sundays), closed Wednesdays
Info: Go to @lilac.oak on Instagram

When her mother, a Buddhist, became a vegan in 2015, keen home cook Chloe Lee channelled her energy into creating dishes her mother could have.

At the time, her mother’s choices when dining out were few. Vegan dishes often had garlic and onions, and her 64-year-old mother is on an allium-free diet.

Ms Lee started working on kimchi, then moved on to pineapple tarts and taro tarts. The 34-year-old quit her job in marketing and branding in 2018 to travel and get married. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, she started selling her wares online.

“During Covid, people became more health-conscious,” she says. “They couldn’t travel, so they were willing to spend money on their health.”

The next year, she opened Lilac Oak, her vegan cafe in Oxley Rise, in a residential development.

“I’d wanted to open a cafe since I was young,” the mother of a three-year-old girl says. “I enjoy cooking and baking. All my cooking at home was research and development for my mother’s diet.”

Her concise menu comprises three sandwiches, including TLT or Tempeh, Lettuce, Tomato ($11.90) with housemade sundried tomato walnut pesto and nine-grain toast; three rice and noodle dishes, including Gochujang Rose Penne ($16.90), with allium-free kimchi, and gochujang sauce; and side dishes such as Loaded Tater Tots ($14.90), with housemade kimchi mayonnaise and Korean seasoned seaweed.

For dessert, there is ice cream made with oat and soya milk, priced at $5.80 or $6.80 a scoop. Flavours include Vanilla Earl Grey, Cookies & Cream and Cinnamon Apple. Chia Waffle Cones are priced at $1 each and Housemade Waffles with organic maple syrup are $6.80 each.

Bakes include Banana Chocolate Chunk Cake ($7.50 a slice), Valrhona Brownies ($8.50 a piece) and Lemon Berry Loaf ($7.50 a slice).

Apart from vegans, Ms Lee, who describes herself as a flexitarian, says she gets parents bringing their children who have dairy and egg allergies, and who normally would not be able to have ice cream and cake.

“The children are so excited,” she says. “They’ll ask their parents if they can have this or that. They are the baby bosses here, and their parents indulge them.”

She also gets healthy business from tourists looking for vegan food, who often dine at the cafe and then do takeaways for later, or to take to nearby Fort Canning Park.

She is working on getting the word out about her cafe. Since the start of 2025, she has been developing her catering arm, where she can offer dessert tables, bento box meals and centrepieces such as a vegan cupcake tower.

“There is that gap in the market,” she adds.