One of the things I miss about home (Cebu City) is the taste of purple yam or ube. Purple yam is a root vegetable of Asian origin that has a natural shade of lavender or purple. The real purple yam doesn't look pretty on the outside but they do taste divine and make good for desserts. Filipinos love it, or at least I haven't known any who doesn't. It can be flavored in ice cream, cakes, cookies, jams, you name it! Any purple-colored food would immediately be associated with it.
In Finland, purple yam is never heard of, and I would assume the Finns will find it weird to eat something purple other than blueberries! I once found a very pricey bottled ube jam (and the last one standing) at an asian shop which tasted like there would only be 20 percent ube content and the rest is artificial flavoring and sugar! Nevertheless I am just thankful I was able to lay my hands on it.
So what would I do with it? I was thinking of making hopia ube.. Ughhh the thought of it is salivating. I remember Baker's Fair ube hopia where I would get them still warm and I always bring a box with me to Cebu every time I visit Manila. I wonder why they never had a franchise in Cebu? Hmmm... Then my thoughts shifted to making puto ube, ube maja, ube ensaymayda, but hey, I only have one bottle and there's no room for failure right now. If there's anything I'm good at, that would be making cakes. So why not hack a Red Ribbon Ube Macapuno Cake? A fluffy ube chiffon sponge filled with cream and mascarpone cheese with macapuno bits! I just had to make it! So off to google to search for some serious food hackers and voila I found Heart of Mary. She shares her recipes and gives great tips for home bakers. All credits to her. If you want the recipe, kindly visit her page at http://pinoyinoz.blogspot.fi/2010/08/ube-macapuno-cake-recipe.html
I did follow her recipe but somehow got a very thick egg yolk batter. So I added a bit more milk to it before folding the egg whites. The cake was rather pale in color because I didn't use too much food color in it. However I did add more color to the cake crumbs to make it look exactly like Red Ribbon's! This was really good and I will definitely make it again!
