Ube hopias are traditional Filpino pastry cakes with purple yam filling. If you had these sweet morsels before and want to try making them at home from scratch, this easy step-by-step recipe is for you. You can read a bit more about the recipe, or skip straight to the instructions!
Also known as hopiang ube, ube hopia is a variant of hopia that uses ube instead of the traditional sweet mung bean paste filling.
Ube is the Filipino word for purple yam, a tuber with strikingly purple flesh native to the Philippines. This root tastes a bit like a sweet potato but nuttier, with hints of vanilla. Some even say it tastes a bit like white chocolate!
In the Philippines, ube is traditionally used to make ube halaya, a custard-like dessert with mashed purple yams, sugar, and milk.
And ube halaya (also called ube jam) is often added to desserts like flans and puddings or used as filling for cake rolls, doughnuts, and, yes, hopia pastries too!
To make ube hopias, you can use ready-made ube halaya or prepare it yourself from scratch.
You should be able to find ube halaya at your local Asian food store, and if not, it’s easy to get it online.
If you want to prepare the ube filling from fresh purple yams instead, you can follow our quick homemade ube butter recipe!
Our ube butter recipe skips the milk and uses less sugar; it also includes a little coconut oil which helps the spread firm up when chilled. The recipe yields one medium jar, enough to fill these pastry cakes. Give it a go if you like!
As for the dough, hopias usually consist of a flaky pastry shell, but some variations come with a cake-like crust.
In our recipe, we used pastry dough, and we’ll show you how to make it from scratch using flour, oil, and water.
Because Filipino hopias have Chinese origins, the dough preparation follows the Chinese puff pastry method. First time hearing it?
Chinese puff pastry is made by repeatedly folding and rolling out alternating layers of a “water dough” and “oil dough” to make a flaky and light crust.
The process is similar to the lamination you have in puff pastry for croissants.
But instead of using butter for the fat layer, it uses an “oil dough“. This dough is a paste-like mix of flour and oil and resembles melted peanut butter. It’s easy to make and dairy-free too, which is a nice plus!
We used the Chinese pastry process before in our no-butter sourdough croissants, which were a success! So, we’re happy to use it once more to make these ube hopia cakes.
The dough preparation will take some time as you have to chill the dough between laminations, but it will be totally worth it! You’ll have ultra flaky hopia cakes with a divine sweet and creamy ube filling — you’ll love them!
And if you’ve got leftover ube halaya when you’re done, you can use it in these ube cinnamon rolls, ube puffed rice bars or this Filipino ube cake roll. They’re all great!
