Ube Waffles (Purple Yam Waffles)

I was looking for birthday cake ideas the other day and stumbled across a few recipes for ube cake. I liked the idea of an ube chiffon cake with coconut icing, but I ultimately decided that I'd rather have an Italian cream cake for my birthday. While I was looking at all the various cake configurations though, I also spotted this waffle recipe. It sounded intriguing enough that I couldn't resist giving it a try.

Since this is a new recipe and uses a few ingredients that I don't often bake with (ube and tapioca starch), I followed the recipe pretty closely this time. The only change I made was to swap out half the sugar for monk fruit sweetener (the kind with erythritol, so it's 1:1 with regualr sugar). So, these waffles are very not dietary. They are, however, quite delicious. The original recipe promised crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. We had a little trouble getting them to be nicely crispy outside, but they certainly delivered on the chewy on the inside aspect. (And the crispiness improved a bit once the waffle iron temperature was dialed up as well.)

I'd like to try making this with coconut milk in place of coconut cream at some point as that would go a long way toward making these waffles a bit healthier and less calorically dense. But if you're not counting calories or just want a fancy dessert waffle, then I feel like these would be an excellent choice. An ube waffle topped with mango ice cream and a bit of whipped coconut cream would make for an excellent, decadent, and visually striking dessert.

Ube Waffles

From Hungry Huy

Ingredients

• 134g thawed frozen grated ube/ube purée
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 tsp. ube extract
• 2 large eggs
• 385mL coconut cream
• 1 Tbsp. oil
• 290g tapioca starch
• 73g rice flour¹
• 70g all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 200g sugar
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground

Directions

1. Whisk the ube, water, and ube extract together into a smooth mixture.
2. Mix in the eggs, coconut cream, and oil.
3. In a separate bowl, sift together the tapioca starch, rice flour, all-purpose flour, and baking powder.
4. Mix the sugar and salt into the dry ingredients.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix to combine. Stir until just combined, but still lumpy.
6. Let the batter rest for 10-20 minutes.
7. Preheat your waffle iron to a slightly higher temperature than you normally use for waffles.
8. Cook waffles, but leave them in the waffle iron for an extra 20-30 seconds beyond what you normally would.
9. Transfer waffles to a rack after cooking so they can crisp up a bit more.
10. Serve with whipped coconut cream, fresh mango, mango ice cream, halo-halo, cream of coconut, and/or halaya jam.

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Variations

Lighter Ube Waffles (untested)

Ingredients

• 134g thawed frozen grated ube/ube purée
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 tsp. ube extract
• 2 large eggs
• 385mL coconut milk
• 1 Tbsp. unsweetened applesauce
• 290g tapioca starch
• 73g brown rice flour
• 70g whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 200g monk fruit sweetener with erythritol (or 1:1 sweetener of your choice)
• 1/4 tsp. coarse sea salt, ground

These changes should just about halve the WW Points cost of these waffles. They're still not dietary by any stretch, but they're at least a bit less reprehensible from a calorie standpoint if made this way.

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¹ NOT glutinous rice flour, just regular rice flour! I acutally used brown rice flour for mine. This seems to have worked nicely, so I might try swapping out the all-purpose flour for whole wheat flour next time just to get a little extra fibre in and make these decadent waffles slightly healthier. ^Back