taro – Yellywelly

I’m working on an ube sponge cake recipe because I miss ube cake from the Philippines. I particularly love the ube cake from Red Ribbon. But because Red Ribbon hasn’t made it to this side of the Atlantic, I will just have to learn to make the cake myself. I’ve always said that necessity is the mother of invention and it is absolutely necessary for me to have my ube cake fix! I haven’t had a slice of ube cake since…I can’t remember. It must have been over 5 years!

My first attempt seemed to go down pretty well. The colour was great and the flavour was absolutely there. The cake was spongy and light.

I will have to make it again maybe next week (after the cake that’s currently residing in my cake box has been consumed). I’ve got recipe improvements in my head already. I’m sure the oriental store in Chelmsford will enjoy the fact that I’ll be buying another jar of ube jam next week! Watch this space for the recipe soon!

I went through a phase of craving bubble tea. Bubble tea is a tea-based drink very popular in Taiwan and its Asian neighbours (there is a milk tea/bubble tea revolution in the Philippines, if my friends’ Facebook and Twitter photos are to be believed!). If you’ve never had bubble tea (where have you been?), think your typical cup of tea mixed with a milk shake (it’s served cold) with tapioca pearls sucked through a big, fat straw. There is a myriad of flavours but my favourite is the taro milk tea (in the Philippines, I used to have mine with taro pudding which is basically taro jelly). And since most of the bubble tea bars are in London, I had to find a way to satisfy my craving. It wouldn’t have been financially responsible to run down to London everytime I had a bubble tea craving. So I bought taro milk tea powder, the straws, oolong tea and the tapioca pearls.

The taro milk tea powder comes in 1kg bags so after a few sessions of taro milk tea indulging, I still had more than half a bag of the taro powder! So I had the brainwave of making a taro-flavoured chiffon cake. It was all an experiment so I wasn’t sure it would work. After the mixture was put together and I put it in the angel food cake pan, I looked at it with a lot of trepidation! The colour wasn’t as deep as I wanted it to be so I was VERY worried!

But after the baking time, it came out and it was quite the yummy and light little thing. It’s still a bit unstable (probably owing to underbeating the egg whites!) and I want a deeper taro flavour, but it was a good start. What surprised me most is how the colour deepened as the cake baked! I’m looking forward to tweaking the recipe and having it come out all lovely and lilac!

Watch this space!