cute

Sweet Potato / Ube Latte

| Zoe Wong

A couple of years ago, I heard that sweet potato lattes were popular in Korea. While making a drink out of potatoes may seem strange, I think it’s one of those uncalled for inventions that no one knew they needed until it existed. It’s the perfect drink during the colder months– because the latte base is sweet potato, the latte is thicker than other flavored lattes, say, a green tea latte, which means that this drink fills you up and retains its heat much better. Additionally, since sweet potatoes are sweet by themselves, you don’t have to add much sugar to the drink, making it a relatively healthy treat!

Another “healthy” treat:

Avocado Smoothie

Avocados contain four grams of protein, making them the fruit with the highest protein content!

That said, I chose to use purple sweet potato (aka ube) this time instead of regular sweet potato. Since the purple coloring is pretty, I also decided to try to do a layered effect and make it a bit fancier than the normal sweet potato latte.

I’d imagine that any other sweet potato variety would also work for this, but keep in mind that the sugar levels differ depending on the type of potato, so adjust the recipe as needed.

Since I’m doing a layered effect, I separated the latte into three parts with the densest layer on the bottom: paste, milk, and whipped cream respectively.

If you want to re-create this recipe normally and don’t care for appearance, go ahead and blend the paste and all the milk together. This is what I usually do with normal sweet potato latte.

  • Denser ube paste at the bottom of the mug.
  • Slowly add hot almond milk.
  • Top with whipped cream and chopped walnuts.

Unfortunately, I would also like to be able to have pretty milk foam floating at the top, but I haven’t found a successful way to froth milk without a milk-frother yet. If you know how to froth milk, by all means, do it!

3-Layer Ube Latte

  • Servings: 1 cup
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print


Use whatever milk you prefer.

Ingredients

  • 1 small Purple Sweet Potato, steamed and peeled
  • 1 Cup hot Almond Milk
  • 2 Tbsp Condensed Milk
  • Whipped Cream for topping
  • Chopped Walnuts for topping (optional)

Directions

  1. In a blender, combine the small purple sweet potato, 1/4 Cup of almond milk, and 2 Tbsp condensed milk. Blend until smooth. Strain mixture if needed. Pour mixture into the bottom of a mug.
  2. Slowly and carefully add hot milk on top of the sweet potato paste.
  3. Top with whipped cream and walnuts, if desired.

Sweet Potato Latte

  • Servings: 1 cup
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print


Use whatever milk you prefer.

Ingredients

  • 1 small Sweet Potato, steamed and peeled
  • 1 Cup hot Almond Milk
  • 2 Tbsp Condensed Milk
  • 4 Walnut Halves, chopped
  • Whipped Cream (optional)

Directions

  1. In a blender, combine the sweet potato, 1 Cup of almond milk, 2 Tbsp condensed milk, and 4 walnut halves. Blend until smooth. Strain mixture if needed.
  2. Pour mixture into a mug. Top with whipped cream and more walnuts, if desired.

By the way, I got my pretty glass mug from Ikea! 😊

Fruity-Poppin’ Cookies

| Zoe Wong

Once again, I made a variation of sablé cookies using only the vanilla portion of the recipe. I made lemon, “cherry,” and “strawberry” shaped cookies to give away as thank you presents.

The red parts (“cherry” and “strawberry”) were made with red gel food coloring and roughly chopped dried cranberries. The green parts were colored and flavored with only matcha powder (too much matcha powder creates a bitter flavor, so substitute with some green gel food coloring if this bothers you). The yellow in the lemon shaped cookies were colored with yellow gel food coloring and flavored with lemon zest!

Note: I would like to use all-natural food dyes, but I didn’t have any on hand (except for green matcha) so I had to use gel coloring. Use whatever dyes you prefer!

The “strawberry” and “cherry” cookies were free-form, meaning I shaped each one of them by hand- the bodies and the stems! Armed with the red and green dough, a lined cookie tray, and a good TV show (like The Bold Type), I went to work. All the while, the checkerboard shaped cookies and the cylindrical lemon cookies (encased in a paper towel roll with a slit lengthwise) were chilling in the freezer.

I highly recommend watching The Bold Type for some womanly empowerment!

By the time I had finished shaping a satisfactory amount of cherries and strawberries, the cookies in the freezer were hard enough to slice. I cut up some checkerboard and lemon cookies into 1/4 inch slices and added them to the empty spaces of the cookie tray.

Once again, I baked the tray at 350°F for about 7 minutes or just until the edges begin to brown.

Finally, I made a quick icing with milk and powdered sugar to pipe on the strawberry seed and lemon wedges.

It is honestly a tedious process but so worth it for all the smiles you get when you give them away ❤