Ube Hopias are traditional Filipino pastry cakes with purple yam filling. If you’ve had these sweet bites before and want to try making them from scratch at home, it’s easy Recipe step by step is for you. You can read a bit more about the recipe or jump straight to the instructions!
Also known as hopiang ubeube Hopia is a variant of Hopia which uses ube instead of the traditional sweet mung bean paste filling.
Ube is the Filipino word for purple yam, a tuber with striking 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 for making Ube Halayaa pudding-like dessert made with pureed purple yams, sugar, and milk.
And ube halaya (aka ube jam) is often added to desserts like flans and puddings, or used as a filling for pie rolls, donuts, and, yes, Hopia pastries too!
To make Ube Hopias you can use finished ube halaya or prepare it yourself from scratch.
You should be able to find Ube Halaya at your local Asian grocery store, and if not, it’s easy to get online.
If you want to make the ube filling with fresh purple yams instead, you can follow our quick homemade ube butter recipe!
Our ube butter recipe omits the milk and uses less sugar; It also contains a little bit of coconut oil, which makes the spread firmer when chilled. The recipe makes a medium sized jar, enough to fill these pastry pies. Try it if you want!
As for the dough, Hopias usually consist of a puff pastry bowlbut some variations have a cake-like crust.
In our recipe we used puff pastry and we show you how to make it from scratch using flour, oil and water.
Since Filipino Hopias are of Chinese origin, the dough preparation follows that Chinese puff pastry method. Hear it for the first time?
Chinese puff pastry is made by alternately folding and rolling out layers of “water dough” and “oil dough” to create a fluffy and light crust.
The process is similar to laminating puff pastry for croissants.
But instead of using butter for the fat layer, it uses a “oil dough“. This dough is a pasty mixture of flour and oil and resembles melted peanut butter. It is easy to make and dairy free too, which is a nice plus!
We’ve used the Chinese pastry process before in our no-butter sourdough croissants, which were a hit! So we like to use it again to make these Ube Hopia cakes.
The dough prep will take some time as you will need to chill the dough between laminations, but it will be totally worth it! You will have ultra flaky Hopia cakes with a divine sweet and creamy ube filling – You will love them!
And if you have any leftover ube halaya when you’re done, you can use it in these ube cinnamon rolls, ube puffed rice bars, or this ube Filipino cake roll. You are all great!