Ube cake

A sponge carrying a heavy yam purée, which changes the fold, the oven and the test for done.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (cream), dairy (double cream).

Ingredients

sponge

• 130 g cake flour
• 250 g ube halaya
• 6 eggs, separated
• 170 g caster sugar
• 80 ml oil
• 60 ml coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 0.5 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 0.25 teaspoon salt

to finish

• 300 ml double cream
• 3 tablespoons icing sugar
• 80 g ube halaya, for the top
• 40 g macapuno strings

Method

1. THE PURÉE GOES INTO THE YOLK BASE, NEVER INTO THE FINISHED BATTER. Ube halaya is heavy and wet, and 250 g of it folded into an aerated batter knocks the air straight back out -- you can watch the volume halve. Beaten into the yolks first, before the meringue exists, it costs nothing.
2. That is the one thing that makes this different from the mamon and taisan already on this site, and everything else in the method follows from it.
3. Beat the halaya smooth on its own first, with the coconut milk, until there is no lump at all. Lumps do not disperse later and show as dense purple spots.
4. Yolks with 70 g of the sugar, beaten 4 minutes. Oil in a thin stream. Then the ube and coconut milk mixture, beaten in fully.
5. Flour, baking powder and salt sifted in and folded to a thick batter -- noticeably thicker and heavier than a plain chiffon, which is correct.
6. Whites with the cream of tartar to soft peaks, the remaining 100 g of sugar added gradually, to a meringue with a drooping tip.
7. FOUR ADDITIONS, NOT THREE, because the base is so much heavier than usual: the first quarter stirred in hard to slacken it, the other three folded. Two additions and you get purple streaks of unincorporated meringue.
8. LOWER AND LONGER: 155C for 45 to 50 minutes in a lined 23 cm tin. At the 165C a plain chiffon wants, the outside sets while the wet middle is still rising, and it sinks.
9. THE TEST IS NOT SPRING-BACK. This cake stays slightly dense and does not bounce under a finger the way mamon does. Go by a skewer coming out clean and by the top having stopped looking wet.
10. Cool in the tin 15 minutes, then on a rack completely. Whip the cream with the icing sugar, cover the cake, and finish with spoonfuls of halaya and the macapuno.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

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