“I usually have to inform folks it’s not that candy,” says self-taught baker Irene Pabellano, founding father of Pastries On Demand and creator of the royal purple-hued ube flan cake. “It’s much like leche flan.”
Pabellano’s eye-popping cake, christened Dying By Ube, was exhausting to overlook when it popped up on my social feeds. The impossibly purple confection, one half chiffon cake and one half flan, is much like a chocoflan; nevertheless, not like the favored Mexican cake, which is baked collectively in a single pan, Pabellano bakes her cake and flan individually, bringing them collectively as soon as cooled. She then gilds it with a drizzle of ube ganache on prime.
“Should you combine the 2, the feel comes out completely different,” she says. “I like my flan clean and creamy and my chiffon cake to be tender and wonderful.”
For the uninitiated, ube, a staple of Filipino and Hawaiian cuisines, is a purple yam that’s usually boiled and mashed then utilized in a wide range of dishes starting from candy to savory. Ube is famous for its nutty vanilla-like taste along with its deep violet colour.
Lately — and thanks, partially, to Instagram — ube has taken off in different elements of america: Yum Yams, an annual ube competition in San Francisco, has traces stretching for blocks with folks vying to style the numerous ube concoctions. Lengthy Seashore additionally simply held its personal ube competition. Ditto for New York Metropolis.
However you don’t must queue up at festivals to get your paws on this deal with. Pabellano’s Pastries On Demand menu that includes Dying By Ube could be discovered at myriad of North County O.C. places, like Faka’s Island Grill at 4th Road Market and Munch Field inside Collective 2one9, each of which could be present in Santa Ana.
Along with Dying By Ube, Pabellano, a local Filipina who operates in Santa Ana, additionally makes matcha tres leches, ube tres leches, Thai tea tres leches, mango pearls, matcha crinkles, and extra. Comply with her on Instagram (@pastriesondemand) for extra particulars.