When Sunshine Bakeries sent over its new Dorayaki range as a media drop, I was expecting the usual suspects to come out on top. Azuki red bean? Safe choice. Uji matcha? Probably a crowd favourite. Taro? I had fairly high hopes.
Cheese, however, was not the flavour I expected to like most.
Sunshine launched its Dorayaki range in Singapore with four flavours — Uji Matcha, Azuki Red Bean, Cheese and Taro — each sandwiched between soft pancakes made with Hokkaido milk. They are individually packed and, at S$2 each, sit firmly in the everyday-snack rather than speciality-Japanese-dessert price range.
We tried all four flavours at home, and there were some clear winners.
Disclosure: Sunshine Bakeries sent us the Dorayaki range as a media drop. No payment was received for this review.
First impressions: softer and fluffier than traditional dorayaki
The first thing you’ll notice is the pancake itself. Rather than being particularly dense, Sunshine’s version is very soft and fluffy, which isn’t surprising considering this is ultimately a dorayaki made by a bread company.
The pancakes are made with Hokkaido milk and have enough sweetness to work with the different fillings without overpowering them.
They’re also individually wrapped, so you don’t need to open an entire box just because you want one piece. That’s useful for lunchboxes, office snacks or, realistically, hiding one in the pantry for later before someone else in the family eats it.
But onto the important part: the fillings.
Cheese: the surprise winner
My favourite was the Cheese Dorayaki.
Before trying it, I couldn’t quite tell which direction Sunshine was going to take with this. Would it be properly savoury, almost like a cheese bun? Or would they make it a sweet cheese filling?
They went with the latter.
The cheese filling is creamy, sweet and slightly savoury, and that little bit of saltiness made the whole dorayaki considerably less jelak for me than some of the sweeter flavours.
It’s not cheesecake filling, nor is it strongly cheesy. Instead, that sweet-savoury balance gives you enough contrast that the flavour doesn’t become monotonous halfway through.
Among the four, this was the one where I actually wanted another piece afterwards.
Sunshine suggests pairing it with iced yuzu green tea, presumably for some acidity to cut through the creamy filling. I didn’t try the suggested pairing, but I can see why that combination might work.
Verdict: 4.5/5
Azuki Red Bean: hard to go wrong with a classic
Then there’s Azuki Red Bean, which is probably the flavour most people immediately associate with dorayaki.
And frankly, it’s hard to go too wrong here.
The smooth red bean filling has that familiar gentle sweetness and works naturally with the fluffy pancake. There’s nothing particularly surprising about it, but that isn’t necessarily a criticism. Sometimes you want the classic flavour to taste like the classic flavour.
Unless you’re my husband, who doesn’t like beans.
In which case no amount of Japanese dessert tradition is going to convince you.
Sunshine recommends having this with warm hojicha, and this is probably the pairing out of the four that sounds most intuitive to me.
Verdict: 4/5
Uji Matcha: good, but slightly too sweet
The Uji Matcha Dorayaki wasn’t bad either.
There’s a recognisable earthy matcha flavour in the filling, but I thought Sunshine might have tried a little too hard to compensate for matcha’s natural bitterness with sweetness.
I would’ve preferred the matcha to retain slightly more of its bitterness. That contrast between bitter tea and sweet pancake could have made the flavour more interesting rather than trying to smooth all those edges away.
That said, people who like matcha-flavoured desserts but don’t necessarily enjoy very bitter matcha may prefer this interpretation.
The pairing suggestion here also gave me a chuckle: chilled canned black coffee.
Matcha and coffee together wasn’t the first combination that sprang to mind, although I can understand the logic — the coffee’s bitterness is supposed to balance the sweeter matcha filling. I didn’t test it, so I can’t tell you whether Sunshine has secretly stumbled upon my new afternoon drink-and-snack combination.
Verdict: 3.5/5
Taro: strong taro flavour, but I wanted more
Unfortunately, Taro was probably my least favourite of the four.
This may partly have been an expectations problem.
When someone says taro dessert to me, my brain immediately goes towards orh nee — rich, sweet yam paste with that thick, almost decadent texture.
Sunshine’s Taro Dorayaki certainly has a noticeable taro flavour, so this isn’t one of those desserts where you’re squinting at the packaging trying to work out what you’re supposed to be tasting.
But I kept expecting the filling to deliver more richness and sweetness, and it never quite got there.
It’s not unpleasant. It simply fell a little short compared with what I had imagined when I saw “Taro” on the packet.
Perhaps people who find traditional yam desserts too rich may actually prefer this lighter interpretation.
Sunshine suggests leaning fully into the taro theme and pairing it with taro or brown sugar milk tea.
Verdict: 3/5
At S$2 each, the ability to mix flavours is the real selling point
What I like most about Sunshine’s Dorayaki isn’t necessarily that any individual flavour beats what you’d get from a dedicated Japanese confectionery brand.
It’s the accessibility.
Each dorayaki retails for S$2, and the range is sold individually at major supermarkets, hypermarkets and convenience stores. That means you could walk in and grab one Cheese, one Azuki and one Matcha instead of buying a box containing five pieces of exactly the same flavour.
For someone like me who likes variety, that’s a much better proposition.
It also makes trying the range relatively low-risk. Spend S$8, get all four, and decide for yourself which camp you’re in.
My ranking would be:
- Cheese
- Azuki Red Bean
- Uji Matcha
- Taro
And Sunshine, if you’re taking requests: chestnut next, please.
A Japanese-style chestnut filling with those fluffy Hokkaido milk pancakes sounds like it could give the Cheese flavour some serious competition.
Sunshine Dorayaki launched islandwide from 21 August 2026 and retails at S$2 per piece at major supermarkets, hypermarkets and convenience stores.
Images: Sunshine Bakeries
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