The Ube Baking Book: Celebrating Filipino Flavor with Chef Henry Awayan

How Did You Get Started Baking?

I baked my first cake when I was about ten years old. It was a vanilla cake made from scratch. My mom had been in an accident and was traveling home from the Philippines. I didn’t fully understand what was going on, but I wanted to do something to welcome her and help her feel better. The cake was completely inedible, but the experience helped me discover my love of baking. 

After high school, I wasn’t sure what path I wanted to take. A guidance counselor suggested culinary school, and I went. I fell in love with pastry arts, went on to study hotel and restaurant management, and worked in a range of bakeries, hotels, and restaurants. I tried a lot of different roles, but cakes were always what I was passionate about.

I spent twelve years working at a bakery where I received most of my hands-on training. I even went to Penn State to study ice cream, but ultimately returned to cake. In 2014, my wife and I finally decided to stop talking about opening a bakery and actually do it. We had a house, two kids, and plenty of reasons to play it safe, but we took a leap of faith and opened Whisk Cake Creations.

Tell Us More About Your Book, The Ube Baking Book

Ube is an incredibly special ingredient in Filipino cuisine and culture. Also known as purple yam, ube is a root vegetable grown in the Philippines with a naturally deep purple color and a flavor that’s often described as nutty and vanilla-like. In many ways, it’s the vanilla of the Philippines—versatile, comforting, and deeply familiar.

Fresh ube can be difficult to find in the U.S., so in the book I cover all four commonly available forms: fresh, frozen, powdered, and extract. Each has its place, and the book explains how home bakers can use each form. Ube is often confused with taro or purple sweet potato, but it has its own distinct flavor and can’t simply be swapped into recipes because something else happens to be purple.

The heart of The Ube Baking Book is showing what this ingredient can do—and how accessible it can be. The book includes both traditional ube recipes passed down through my family and fusion recipes we make at the bakery, like ube tiramisu, ube coffee cake, ube panna cotta, and even ube focaccia. Because ube is still new to many people, I wanted to introduce it through familiar formats while honoring its origins.

Ube may be viral right now, but this book is about more than a trend. It’s about giving people a deeper understanding of the ingredient, reliable recipes they can trust, and a way to connect with Filipino food culture through baking. Increased visibility and accessibility for our cuisine are a positive step, as long as that curiosity comes with respect and context for where ube comes from and why it is significant to Filipino cuisine.

The Ube Baking Book: Decadent and Delicious Recipes with Filipino Purple Yam, by Henry Awayan (Ulysses Press, 2025).