Six Tastes Kitchen

RECIPE

*There is something nostalgic about this Purple Yam Pie or Ube Halaya, as we call it back home. It reminds me of my childhood in the Philippines. During Christmas or other holidays, my mother would prepare sweet dishes mostly made from glutinous sticky rice or tubers (sweet potatoes, yam, cassava, etc), brown sugar or panutsa, and coconut milk.

Filipinos commonly used these three ingredients for making desserts or sweet snacks until imports of baking supplies such as flour, heavy cream, butter, etc. from international markets started flooding the country’s local stores.

We don’t call it a pie because it does not have a crust for a base; hence this dish is gluten-free. Purple Yam is a starchy root vegetable, different from purple sweet potato or taro root.

I grew up with my mother using coconut cream in almost every dish at home because again it was more locally accessible and affordable compared to heavy cream.

Many older folks would use traditional panutsa instead of brown sugar to achieve the deep caramel-like flavor without using butter. Panutsa is made by crushing unrefined sugar cane to extract the juice. The juice is then boiled in deep pans over the fire until it thickens into a syrup. The syrup is then poured into emptied-and-sundried half-coconut shells. When it cools down, it turns solid and forms into a round shape. Anyone can simply go to the local palengke (market) and buy this ready-made.

Back then, a sweet dish like Ube Halaya was already low-carb, gluten-free, and dairy-free. This was not deliberate because our lolas (grandmas) and nanays (mothers) had adopted these diets. It was more circumstantial because those ingredients were more accessible to locals and cheaper than flour, heavy cream, and refined sugar. In the old days, people’s diets were defined by their geographic locations and food sources.

Nowadays, food is produced in one part of the world and processed in another location for distribution worldwide. Our food production system has become more complex. Back then, we didn’t have to read the labels for product ingredients. Today, we need to be more proactive to make smarter and healthier food choices.

I tried to recreate this dish as I remembered it from my mother. This is the closest I could get to a “traditional” Filipino-style Ube Halaya Pie because I was limited to what I had in my pantry and the local store. This version is not dairy-free since I used butter and evaporated milk. However, it is still gluten-free and low-carb since I didn’t use any flour.

Below is a short overview of the recipe. For a complete copy, you may download from the link:

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The Recipe >>>
UBE (PURPLE YAM) PIE – Filipino Style

Ingredients:
Powdered purple yam, Coconut cream, Evaporated milk, Butter, Vanilla extract, Brown sugar, Salt, Coconut flakes, Sugar

Procedures:

1. Combine coconut cream, ube powder, butter, vanilla, and brown sugar.

2. Add the evaporated milk and salt to the mixture. Let it simmer and keep stirring until all ingredients are fully dissolved.

3. Transfer to a baking dish and bake.

4. Check the center of the pie using the toothpick test.

5. Toast the coconut flakes and sugar. Transfer to a dry plate for garnishing.