Ube Cake

My moth­er, hav­ing spent her child­hood in the Philip­pines, loves ube, a pur­ple yam com­mon­ly enjoyed there — so, for her birth­day, I knew I want­ed to try mak­ing her an ube cake. It took a lit­tle exper­i­men­ta­tion to get both the tex­ture and fla­vor right, espe­cial­ly as the fla­vor of ube can be quite sub­tle, but I was rather pleased with the end result and am excit­ed to share it!

If you’ve nev­er had ube, it’s a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to describe how it tastes — I per­son­al­ly find it to have a very sub­tle fla­vor that is a lit­tle nut­ty with under­tones of vanil­la. To that end, I did have a lit­tle trou­ble mak­ing sure that the cake would cap­ture its flavor:

• To achieve that sort of nut­ty ube fla­vor, I use both ube jam and ube extract. You can also make your own ube puree from scratch to use in lieu of jam — to do so, you sim­ply wash and boil about 1 pound of pur­ple yam for around 40 min­utes, mash it up, and then cook it with 1 cup of coconut milk, ½ cup of sug­ar, and a pinch of salt.
• Maca­puno — which, at least for our pur­pos­es, is basi­cal­ly sweet coconut — pairs well with the sub­tler fla­vor of ube, and indeed the two are often used togeth­er. I like to spread some in between the lay­ers of cake for an extra sort of kick. You can buy maca­puno in a jar, usu­al­ly at a Fil­ipino gro­cery store. 

Begin by beat­ing the egg yolks with ¾ cup of the sug­ar until pale. Add the milk, ube extract, and ube jam to the egg yolk mix and stir togeth­er. Now, if you’re feel­ing espe­cial­ly ambi­tious, you can make ube puree from scratch as a sub­sti­tute for ube jam, but I’ve actu­al­ly per­son­al­ly found that the store-bought ube jam has a stronger ube fla­vor, at least when baked into a cake.

The ube extract is a very dark pur­ple col­or, which may look a lit­tle strange at first — but once you give the wet ingre­di­ents a good stir, the mix­ture will take on a much less intense shade of pur­ple that more close­ly resem­bles the soft­er hue com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with ube.

In a sep­a­rate bowl, mix the dry ingre­di­ents: com­bine the flour, bak­ing pow­der, and salt in a bowl and set aside. Make sure you use a large bowl — all the wet ingre­di­ents, includ­ing some volu­mi­nous egg whites, will even­tu­al­ly be added in!

Pour the egg yolk mix­ture into the dry ingre­di­ents, and stir gen­tly until just combined.

In the bowl of a stand mix­er, use the whisk attach­ment to beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add in the remain­ing ¼ cup of sug­ar to the egg whites, then beat fur­ther until stiff peaks form. Very gen­tly, fold the egg whites into the bat­ter, being care­ful not to over­mix. Your cake bat­ter will be a love­ly pur­ple col­or, large­ly from the ube extract. If you want an even rich­er shade of pur­ple, you can also use gel food coloring.

Grease two 6″ pans and divide the bat­ter between them. You should have extra bat­ter left over, which will come in handy for dec­o­rat­ing, so do pour the extra bat­ter into an addi­tion­al cake pan if you have one. Place in the oven and bake at 350° for about 20 min­utes, or until a tooth­pick insert­ed into the cen­ter of each cake comes out clean.

While the cakes are bak­ing, you can work on the frost­ing. There are any num­ber of dif­fer­ent types of frost­ing you can use, such as cream cheese frost­ing, swiss meringue but­ter­cream, etc. — as with the rest of my cakes, I use a basic whipped cream that I fla­vor to suit to occa­sion; in this case, an ube whipped cream. To make it, all you do is whip heavy cream with sug­ar and ube jam, until stiff peaks form.

When the cakes are done bak­ing, let them cool until they are room tem­per­a­ture, then chill them fur­ther in the fridge (if you try to frost the cakes while they are still warm, the frost­ing will melt right off). You may also note that the cakes no longer seem to be that pret­ty pur­ple col­or from before, but don’t wor­ry —this is just the exte­ri­or, and the insides will be just as pur­ple as ever once you cut into them.

After the cakes have chilled, remove them from the fridge, and lev­el them if nec­es­sary, using a cake lev­el­er or a long knife (I usu­al­ly just use a bread knife to lev­el my cakes). Place one of the cake lay­ers on a cake board, and apply a gen­er­ous lay­er of frost­ing atop it. Spread about ½ cup of maca­puno (sweet coconut) on top of the frost­ing. Apply a thick lay­er of ube jam to the oth­er cake lay­er, and stack on top.

Place the sec­ond lay­er of the cake on top of the first, and apply a sin­gle lay­er of frost­ing to the cake as a whole. This will be our crumb coat, which will help us achieve a more thor­ough­ly frost­ed cake lat­er. Place the cake in the freez­er for about 15 min­utes, then remove.

Fin­ish frost­ing the cake by apply­ing anoth­er lay­er of the whipped cream. At this point, you can take as many cre­ative lib­er­ties as you like, but one pop­u­lar way to dec­o­rate an ube cake is to cov­er it in cake crumbs. Remem­ber the extra cake lay­er we baked? Rip it up and grind it togeth­er in a food proces­sor, along with a few extra drops of ube extract to get an even more intense pur­ple col­or, if desired.

Cov­er the cake in the pur­ple cake crumbs. Admit­ted­ly, cov­er­ing the sides can be a lit­tle dif­fi­cult — when I’m try­ing to get the cake ful­ly blan­ket­ed in the crumbs, I quite lit­er­al­ly throw the crumbs at the sides.

And that’s my recipe for ube cake — it makes a love­ly, not-too-rich dessert that works well for a birth­day — or any oth­er occasion!

 

Pho­tog­ra­phy by Wil­son Tang