When I worked at the passport office I had a few co-workers who were either from the Philippines or of Filipino heritage. One day while in the break room a couple of those co-workers were eating a bread that had a purple swirl in it. I asked them what the purple was. They told me it was ube, a purple yam that's really sweet. Which I found out when I tried a piece of the bread: it tasted more like berries. I've been a fan ever since (although ironically, I've only had it one other time in a cupcake). I didn't bake with it for Helen at first in part because I wasn't sure where to find the ingredients. So this year I decided would be the year that I made her an ube treat for Christmas.
During my search, I discovered that there's more than one way to add ube to a recipe. After trying the bread at work, I looked for ube bread recipes and they all said that the swirl is ube halaya (a.k.a. ube jam). But while looking for cookie recipes, the ingredients were different: powdered ube and ube extract/flavoring. According to the food blogs I looked at, both ingredients can be found at Asian grocery stores - like Seafood City, which is conveniently located at Southcenter Mall but I 'd always figured was strictly a seafood store based on the name. Turns out, they have a lot more than seafood. Like powdered ube and ube flavoring:
I had already picked out a recipe from
The Little Epicurean that was exactly what I wanted to make for Helen. But also a bit different as many of the "ube cookie" search results were for ube crinkles (since I love chocolate crinkles I plan on making those for myself later 😋). She loved them and could really taste the ube flavor (which I was briefly worried about after a contestant on Food Network's
Christmas Cookie Challenge made ube cookies with both powder and extract and the judges couldn't taste the ube flavor. He ended up going home).
