Summer Wedding

My husband's cousin (Cindy) e-mailed me asking if I can make an authentic Filipino cake - ube cake. Ube cake is a purple sweet yam cake, which is one of Filipino's favorite delicacy. In my experience, ube cake is very challenging to make as it requires mashed, or finely grated purple yam that tends to absorb the liquid in the batter and could result in a dry cake.

For this gorgeous wedding cake, the cake is a sponge “ube” cake filled with Filipino buttercream and layers of macapuno. Macapuno is a young coconut preserve.



The cake is adorned with marshmallow-butter-flavored fondant. The flowers are chrysanthemum orchids, airbrushed and dusted with edible, African violet petal dust.

The challenge for this cake it to maintain it’s shape due to the extreme heat wave of the summer. The temperature outside the wedding venue was 110 deg F and the weather inside the building was 70 deg F (not accounting the body heat from at least 150 guests). My concern was the “will the buttercream melt and ruined the shape of the cake?” Overall, the cake was moist and tasted authentically Filipino. The bride, groom, and guests were very pleased with the taste and right balance of the sweetness.

No wasted cake and no leftovers to bring home!

Remarks from Cindy:

Thanks Ev! the cake was a success! Chrissie Seto and Alan Perez and their guests really enjoyed the cake!