Ube
Purple yam — a starchy tuber with a vividly purple color and a mild, slightly nutty, vanilla-like flavor, central to Filipino desserts.
Ube (Dioscorea alata) is often confused with taro or the orange-fleshed sweet potato sold as "purple yam" in some markets, but it's its own distinct tuber, prized above all for its striking purple color as much as its flavor. Boiled and mashed with condensed milk and butter, it becomes ube halaya, a jam-like spread eaten on its own or used as a filling and topping in other desserts.
Ube shows up throughout the dessert table — folded into halo-halo, swirled into leche flan, mixed into puto batter, and used as a filling in pastries. Outside the Philippines, ube is most commonly found frozen (grated or as halaya) or as a flavoring extract and powder.
Where you'll taste it
Recipes on Pancit.com that call for ube.
Halo-Halo
Layered Filipino shaved ice with sweet beans, fruits, jellies, ube, leche flan, and evaporated milk.
Leche Flan
A silky steamed egg custard in liquid caramel — the centerpiece of every Filipino fiesta dessert table.
Maja Blanca
A silky coconut milk pudding studded with sweet corn, topped with toasted latik.
Puto
Soft, fluffy steamed rice cakes — the everyday companion to pancit and dinuguan.
Sapin-Sapin
Vividly layered glutinous rice cake in purple, yellow, and white, topped with coconut curds.
Turon
Crisp fried spring rolls of saba banana and jackfruit in a caramelized brown sugar shell.
Ube Halaya
Sweet, vividly purple ube yam jam cooked slow with coconut and condensed milk.
Hopia
Flaky, laminated pastry wrapped around a sweet mung bean filling, plus ube, baboy, and other popular varieties.
Polvoron
Toasted flour, milk, sugar, and butter pressed into a crumbly candy, plus pinipig, cashew, ube, and cocoa varieties.