The curry puff and the muffins

What else did Oven Marvel sell?

Two things. Oven Marvel’s whole menu was chicken pies, curry puffs and muffins (ieatishootipost, 2013). No sausage rolls, no egg tarts, no cakes, no drinks worth mentioning. A small menu is usually a sign of a kitchen that knows exactly what it is good at, and this one was good at pastry.

What was the Oven Marvel curry puff like?

The Oven Marvel curry puff was a puff pastry curry puff, made with the same house-made butter pastry as the pie (ieatishootipost, 2013). That alone set it apart. Most Singapore curry puffs are either the thick, short, crimped kind or the spiral-layered “karipap pusing” style, deep-fried. This one was a bakery curry puff: flaky and buttery rather than crunchy.

The filling was curried potato with small pieces of chicken. Leslie Tay recorded how the potatoes were handled: the waxy local kind, boiled first in their skins, then peeled, diced and fried in a curry powder that the chef ground himself (ieatishootipost, 2013). That method matters. Boiling potatoes whole keeps them firm, so they hold their shape when fried, and a waxy potato stays in cubes instead of turning into mash. Home-ground curry powder usually means fresher, more aromatic spice than a sachet.

There was no egg. Leslie Tay said a quarter of a hard-boiled egg would have made it perfect (ieatishootipost, 2013), which is as clear a record as you could want that it did not come with one. Egg in a curry puff is a common Singapore preference, so this was a deliberate difference, or simply the chef’s taste.

How much was a curry puff?

Reviewers recorded roughly S$2 around 2009 (ieatishootipost, 2009), S$2.50 in 2013 (ieatishootipost, 2013) and S$2.80 from 2014 through 2020 (slowchomp, 2015) (SETHLUI.com, 2020). It was the cheap way in: if the pies had sold out, the curry puffs sometimes had not.

Was the curry puff as good as the pie?

Opinions differ, and the reviews are thinner. The mitsueki visit in December 2013 only managed the muffin and the curry puff, which tells you something about how early the pies could run out (mitsueki.sg, 2013). Reviewers liked it; few raved about it the way they did about the pie.

Why did a pie shop sell muffins?

Because it started as a muffin shop. In January 2009 the Sunshine Plaza unit traded as Delicious Muffins (ieatishootipost, 2009). At some point before August 2013 the name changed to Oven Marvel, partly because, as Leslie Tay put it, buying chicken pies and curry puffs from a shop called Delicious Muffins was a bit funny (ieatishootipost, 2009). The muffins stayed on the menu to the end. In fact, the last review I found from a customer while the shop was still open, in May 2021, was about a muffin (Burpple).

What muffin flavours were there?

Reviewers between 2018 and 2020 name five (Burpple) (SETHLUI.com, 2020):

• Banana Walnut
• Apple Raisin
• Orange Peel
• Choco’Wanna, a chocolate muffin by its name
• Double Chocolate Chip, the one Burpple reviewers return to most often

They cost roughly S$2.20 to S$2.80 in that period (SETHLUI.com, 2020). Reviewers describe them baked fresh, with a crisp top and a moist inside (Burpple). That crisp top is a giveaway of a fairly hot oven and a batter that is not too wet, which is how I bake my banana walnut muffins and double chocolate chip muffins.

How are the curry puff and the chicken pie different?

They shared the pastry and the oven, and almost nothing else.

That table compares one shop’s two pastries. The wider question of chicken pie vs curry puff as Singapore snacks, with their usual shapes, pastries and fillings side by side, is answered at more length on a sister site. What made Oven Marvel’s pair unusual is that both used the same house-made butter puff, the subject of why Oven Marvel used puff pastry, not shortcrust.

Can I make them at home?

Yes, with the caveat that runs through this whole site: nobody has published the shop’s recipes, so these are my recreations, built from the descriptions above. Start with the curry puff recreation, which uses the same rough puff pastry as my chicken pie. The muffins are easier and quicker, and a good way to make an afternoon feel like a ground-floor detour on Bencoolen Street.