October 7, 2011

Specialty Ube Halaya Cake and Cupcakes

I had never heard of a purple yam cake before when I received an inquiry to make one. But I was intrigued just by the colourful and fancy sound of it. So I started researching and found that it is a Philippine specialty, where purple yam actually is called ube (oobee).

Allrecipes.com had this recipe which sounded very doable. I called up a local Asian food store and luckily they are carrying purple yams.

So I started my first try at ube cake, cupcakes actually. The recipe is very similar to a chiffon cake with added ube.

While purple yams are really deep purple coloured, after adding all the other ingredients the batter looked rather grayish, so I had to increase the amount of food colouring. The cupcakes came out great, really fluffy and light. I added a buttercream frosting swirl that I still had with some sprinkles.

From the success with the cupcakes, I dared trying a ube cake for the customer. He let me know that he used to get one every year in Vancouver and I found out that there it was paired with a ube halaya frosting. Ube halaya is another dessert specialty from the Philippines with cooked ube and condensed milk.

Here are the cake layeres filled with ube halaya buttercream.

For the filling I simply mixed some ube puree with sweetened condensed milk and added this to my standard buttercream with a tiny bit of purple food colouring.

The cake was frosted in a piped vanilla buttercream pattern with a few rows of ube halaya buttercream.

Soft pink and white gumpaste daisies finish the design.

I was so excited to receive this great feedback from the customer:

I just wanted to let you know that the Purple Yam cake you made was absolutely amazing! My girlfriend loved it, as well as everyone at the party.

It was actually better than the one we used to get in Vancouver, thanks again!

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