Ube (Purple Yam)

Filipinos love Ube.  In the Philippines, a lot of desserts are made with ube as a flavor.  Ube is a type of yam or root, similar to Taro.  Lately, I've been obsessing over making stuff with ube flavor. I don't believe it is the same one as the Okinawa purple potato but they could be similar in color.  They both have that deep purple color that is just so beautiful!  I'm only able to find frozen (peeled) ube and frozen grated ube from Ranch 99. 

Since I love coffee flavored cakes, I wanted to try baking an ube cake like the Filipino bakeries bake.  Here's my first attempt:

Icing the cake was more difficult that baking the cake itself of course!  I bake almost all my cakes as a chiffon cake because it's very easy to bake.  I've had numerous success on chiffon cakes and I like the fluffy light texture of it.  Some people say chiffon is hard to bake because it becomes flat once it's out of the oven, but it's really about how you beat the egg whites.  I don't have a fancy stand mixers (which I would like to have--just to have it!) But, honestly, I wouldn't even use the fancy KitchenAid stand up mixer for chiffon cakes because you have to be able to really know when to stop beating your whites.  I do have the KitchenAid regular hand mixers that I use (with 9 speed), but for the longest time, I had the cheap kind that worked as well as my 9 speed--it just took longer to beat the eggs :)

I was a bit scared since I thought the ube would not make the cake rise since it's a very dense ingredient but it did!  I will post the recipe as soon as I put it together.  It's really hard to find a Filipino ube chiffon cake recipe online so I think a lot of people out there would appreciate the recipe :)  I also added McCormick's Ube flavoring to this cake.