With sweet treat recipes that range from Yakult Leches Cake and Marbled Ube Banana Bread to Mochi-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies and Pandan Coconut Cream Pie, recipe developer, content creator, and now-author Arlyn Osborne’s Sugarcane: Sweet Recipes from My Half-Filipino Kitchen is packed with a whole rainbow of magical Filipino desserts. The debut cookbook celebrates her Filipino heritage by fusing traditional dishes with Western methods widely used in the states, and wow, is it wonderful.
The 80 recipes in Sugarcane illustrate Arlyn’s earliest memories surrounding food, and some have even followed her since her middle school days. In fact, the book’s cover honors pandesal, the popular Philippine bread rolls that brought her closer to her family overseas than ever before (in her words: “It’s iconic. A national treasure.”).
Though you’d never guess it from the look of her colorful treats, Arlyn didn’t grow up cooking. As she describes it, going all-out for everyday meals wasn’t exactly her parents’ thing.
“Cooking was something that was mostly reserved for special occasions like holidays, birthdays, celebrations, that sort of thing,” she says. “It just wasn't worth the trouble to them. Most of our meals were just fast food or frozen Kids Cuisine dinners.”
Arlyn says her childhood was “dysfunctional,” and this detachment from food was just a small part of the picture. Despite an absence of physical affection and frequent “I love you”s at home, Arlyn let her undying love for Food Network and a strong sweet tooth sweep her away into the culinary world.
After years of working in food styling and production, writing about food, and developing recipes, Arlyn’s using her first cookbook to communicate her passion for cooking and baking, as well as carry on the legacy of Filipino food to ultimately find her place in it all.
“I think over the years, I have become sometimes a little uncomfortable to say some of the things I wish I could say out loud,” she says. “For me, food is the way for me to say those things without actually saying them.”
About The Recipes
Sugarcane: Sweet Recipes from My Half-Filipino Kitchen by Arlyn Osborne
Flipping through the recipes in Sugarcane, you may see a few ingredients that aren’t very common in Western cooking listed – like pandan, tamarind, ube, calamansi, star fruit, mochi, and rambutan – but there’s familiarity in each one of them.
Arlyn wrote Sugarcane for both people who are familiar with Filipino food, and those who are not. Either way, the recipes will guide you to greatness.
“I get that it can be a little intimidating for people to try out ingredients or desserts they've never heard of before, but I do think that people should know that if they're cooking from my cookbook, they’re going to be okay,” she says. “I think everyone’s going to feel that they're personified in each recipe a little bit.”
From The Book: Ube Coconut Cake
Arlyn’s Ube Coconut Cake recipe pulls inspiration from ube cake (the “crown jewel” when it comes to Filipino cake) and lucious coconut cakes from the American South. Ube halaya, which is essentially an ube jam, is the star of the coconut cake recipe, lending a gorgeous purple hue to the tender layers. Everything gets sandwiched in between and smothered in a sweet coconut icing *so* yummy, you’ll quickly see why Arlyn makes it every year for her birthday.
Ingredients for Ube Coconut Cake
Ube Cake
- 3 cups (375 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
- ¾ teaspoon baking soda
- ¾ cup (186 g) ube halaya, at room temperature
- 2 ¼ cups (450 g) granulated sugar
- 6 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 tablespoon ube paste
- 1 ½ cups (360 g) buttermilk
- 1 ½ cups (315 g) neutral oil
Coconut Frosting
- Two 16 oz. (454 g) containers sour cream
- 4 cups (800g) granulated sugar
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 14 cups (700g) unsweetened shredded coconut
How to Make Ube Coconut Cake
For the Ube Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C). Grease two 9-inch round cake pans with cooking spray and line the bottoms with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitter with the whisk, add the ube halaya and beat until smooth. Add the sugar and beat on medium-high speed until combined but not creamed. The sugar should look moist, crumbly, and purple.
- Add the eggs and ube paste and beat on medium speed until combined, about 30 seconds. Add the buttermilk and oil and beat until combined, about 30 seconds.
- Sift in half of the flour mixture and whisk by hand until just combined. Repeat with the remaining flour mixture and whisk until just combined.
- Divide the batter evenly between the prepared cake pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes.
- Transfer the pans to a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes. Run a small offset spatula around the perimeter to loosen the edges. Invert the cakes onto the wire rack. Remove the parchment and invert again onto wire racks so they sit right side up. Let cool completely.
For the Coconut Frosting
- To the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, add the sour cream, sugar, and salt. Beat on low speed until combined. Add a third of the coconut and beat on low speed until combined. Repeat two more times.
To assemble
- Place one cake layer (top side up) on a cake plate. Top with 2 cups (450 g) of frosting and spread evenly. Top with the second cake layer (bottom side up).
- Cover the top evenly with 2 ½ (560 g) cups of frosting. Use the remaining frosting for the sides. Wrapt the cake all over with plastic wrap so it touches the frosting directly and protects the cake from air. Refrigerate overnight. As it sits, both the cake layers and coconut shreds will soak up excess moisture from the frosting.
- Let the cake sit out at room temperature for 1 hour to take the chill off before serving. Due to the nature of the frosting, it's best to use a serrated knife to “saw” through the cake into slices.
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Photography by Linda Xiao. Excerpted with permission from Sugarcane by: Arlyn Osborne published by Hardie Grant Publishing, March 2024, RRP $35.00 Hardcover.
