Ube for Days: Sweet Recipes

It all started with 2.2 kilos of ube that I bought from our trip to Wawa for P136. This was *gasp* the 1st time I’d ever seen ube in its raw form, and it was pretty humongous, too. I was excited to see what I could make out of it.

2.2 kilos of ube for P136 pesos ?

The first thing I made was halaya, a sort of jam taken from the Spanish word jalea, which means jelly. There were many recipes for it, but most were typically made with coconut and/or condensed milk and some butter. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found it so inconvenient to eat halaya by the spoonfuls, and it has always made me feel incredibly guilty. I’m not sure why, but I get the same feeling eating a tablespoon of peanut butter. So, this 1st experiment addresses that mini-psychosis ?

Ube Parmesan Balls

I sliced the ube at a random portion, approximating how much I’d need, and ended up with 600 grams. Next, I steamed, peeled, and cubed it, then popped it into the food processor (which broke right after this batch. The Magic Bullet has been one of the most convenient things in our kitchen, and I’m sad about it). I manually mashed the rest with a potato masher and a fork.

I opened a 300 mL can of condensed milk, emptied it into a saucepan, and waited for it to boil. Once it did, I lowered the heat and added the mashed ube. Here’s where I tweaked it a bit. I saw some less traditional halaya recipes that were topped with cheese, and though I’ve never had it, I could imagine how the sweet-salty combo could work. Taking it a step further, I thought, “why not melt some cheese into the halaya?” So I did. I kept it on the heat just until it had the consistency that could be turned into balls (the alternative to eating it with a spoon). It’s very sticky, and I knew they wouldn’t keep their shape nor stay separate if I didn’t coat them with something. I thought about confectioner’s sugar, but I didn’t want to add any more sweetness to it. That was then I got the idea to coat it in parmesan cheese instead. The most expensive ube treat, ever ? but worth it, in my opinion. Love how they turned out.

Such a beautiful color! Freshly sliced and sticky with sap

Steamed and cubed for my mini food processor, the Magic Bullet

Mashed the rest of the ube manually

Ube with the condensed milk and melting cheese

Almost at the right consistency

Bite-sized, creamy halaya with a sweet-savory twist

Ingredients:

600 g ube, steamed and mashed

300 mL condensed milk

1/2 c processed cheese (or any melty cheese)

1/4 c parmesan for coating

Ube Cookies

Cookies are my favorite kind of sweets, about as much as ice cream. I found this recipe for crinkles on What to Cook Today and I was immediately persuaded to try it because it was the most photogenic purple cookie among all my options. Yes, I choose recipes based on how good the cook’s final products look. ?

I tried the recipe twice. The 1st batch I made, I added more ube for the superficial reason of not wanting to lose the color in the batter. That resulted in yummy cookie with great ube flavor, but slightly denser than I wanted. Also, it didn’t “crinkle” or crack, and I must’ve not coated in enough powdered sugar because it just looks like it was absorbed into the cookie?

Salty wanted to know what I was busy with

The dough did not spread at all

The dense 1st batch of ube cookies

The next time I tried it, I followed the recipe exactly as written (or as close I could get to it using an analog weighing scale), and this time it was soft and chewy just like crinkles are supposed to be. However, the 1st 16 cookies I put in the oven still did not crinkle on their own. So I tried pressing down on the dough with the back of a spoon before baking the last batch and voila! that was all it took for the cracks to appear. Still, my powdered sugar was mostly absorbed by the cookie, no matter how heavily I had coated them before going in the oven. Their whiteness also affected the outer color of the cookie, making it more pink than purple. This was the 1st time for me to attempt crinkles… does anyone know what could’ve gone wrong? Or is it just our tropical weather?

Batch 2: With less ube, the batter was just an old rose shade

So thick with powdered sugar

Batch 2.2: I pressed on the dough with the back of a spoon

Pink Crinkles = Pinkles LOL

Pink Cookies = Pookies ?

They made the kitchen smell amazing, and even Salty couldn’t wait to have some.

After all of that I still have about a kilo of ube left. There’s still an ice cream recipe I want to try, that Macy made a video for. I’ll do that once I get some coconut cream from the grocery. After that, I’m going to try to make savory dishes. I’ve already seen an Indian recipe that I’m excited for.

Does anyone want a taste of the cookies? They’re all I have left