Cake Tasting

Bottom to Top: Ube cake with macapuno buttercream, Ube cake with semi-sweet chocolate and dark chocolate buttercreams, chocolate cake with chestnut and semi-sweet buttercreams, chocolate cake with hazelnut and semi-sweet buttercreams, chocolate cake with strawberry and dark chocolate buttercreams.

Ube and chocolate cakes on a cake platter, unfilled.

His and Her cake tasting.  Six flavors of buttercream.

My son calls these buttercreams as ice creams.  He was so excited thinking that these were his ice cream desserts.

Italian Meringue Buttercreams

Italian Meringue Buttercreams

 

Heavenly Ube Cake - Part 2

There are a variety of purple yam (a.k.a. "ube") cake recipes available online.  The recipe I used for this cake came from my grandparents, the former owners of F. Quinal Store & Bakery in the Southern Province of the Philippine Island that was established since 1949 through 2004, but with some modifications.  

The modifications to the recipe includes the following: ingredient substitutions, incorporating baking techniques that I learned from the Institute of Culinary Education, applying the Lean Six Sigma principles (Gage R&R and DOE) to provide consistent results and to identify and reduce variations in the measurement system, and applying Chemistry to balance acid and base during ingredient substitution.  After all, baking is science and art.  I am such a dork!

I finally perfected the recipe after so many Design of Experiments!  Changing one variable at a time to produce one light, moist, dense, and delicate piece of art.

This cake started with these gorgeous deep purple-colored yams that were cooked, boiled, and mashed.  Thanks to food processor.

Bake until perfection.  This batch of 6" cakes is trial number of something number.  I can't recall how many failed batches I made and how many happy stomachs it fed.  They were all pleased to be my Guiney pigs and asked to keep it coming.   However this batch (cooling on the rack) came flat and gorgeously smooth.

 Another batch...  Consistent result!  No dome and / or sinking in the middle.

This ube cake recipe has a sponge or chiffon cake texture.  

This recipe is a keeper!  

It was dense and moist!

I find it a compliment when this home baked cake is compared to renowned commercial bakeries, such as Red Ribbon and Goldilocks.

I have to continue practicing to perfect smooth buttercream covering. 

I am not avid of food coloring, but for the sake of traditional “purple” ube cake I have to raise the purple food coloring quantity in my baking to accentuate the purple hue of the purple yam. 

Heavenly Ube Cake

Happy New Year!

A picture of purple yam ("ube") sponge cake.  Ube cake is filled with young coconut (a.k.a macapuno) buttercream.

The ube cake was covered in ube buttercream. It was the best batch of ube cake ever.  As I cut the layers to stack the cakes, cake crumbs sticks to the knife, which is an indication of moist, dense cake.

Happy New Year!