sweets

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! 😊

Turtle-Shaped Cookies

| Zoe Wong

I made little turtle sablé cookies inspired again by linuxhacker.ru!

To make the dough, I used my adapted recipe found here, but only the vanilla portion of the recipe.

First, I split the dough into three parts: (A) 1/3 to make the turtles’ head and limbs, (B) 1/3 for the inner part of the body, and (C) 1/3 for the green shell. I colored the 1/3 reserved for the shell with 2 drops of green gel coloring and flavored it with 1 Tbsp of matcha (green tea powder).

To make the turtle bodies, I rolled out (B) vanilla dough into a long cord measuring roughly 12 inches. Then, I rolled out (C) the matcha dough until it was flat, but measured 12 inches long and ensured it was wide enough to wrap around (B) the vanilla cord.

Next, I dabbed a tiny amount of water with my fingers onto (B) the vanilla cord and firmly wrapped (C) the matcha around it, squeezing gently to seal the doughs together. To ensure that the dough kept its cylindrical shape, I inserted it inside a paper towel roll with a slit lengthwise that I had previously cut. Finally, I let the dough rest inside the freezer still encased in the paper towel roll for at least 3 hours.

With (A) the remaining vanilla dough, I divided it into two parts. One part would be to made the heads. The other part would be to make the fins and tail. At this part, I roughly estimated that my dough would yield about 40 baby turtles, and set off to make 40 small balls of dough out of the dough reserved for turtle heads. Once I was done with the heads, I put aside 1/8 of the dough reserved for the fins and tails. This 1/8 would be used to make 40 tails. The remaining 7/8 would be turned into 160 tiny balls that would become the turtles’ fins.

After 3 hours of rest, I took out the “body” dough from the freezer and cut the dough into quarter inch slices, rotating the dough between slices to minimize warping the cylindrical shape. If the dough yields more than 40 slices, then I would just make the leftovers as “non-turtles.”

I assembled the body slices onto a sheet of parchment-lined cookie tray and attached the head, limbs, and tails with a tiny bit of water from my fingers to help adhere the doughs better.

Using small chocolate sprinkles, I inserted two on each side of the heads to make “eyes.” I baked the turtle cookies at 350°F for about 7 minutes or just until the edges of the fins started to brown. After the cookies are cooled to room temperature, I melted some chocolate and filled a small piping bag I made out of parchment paper. I cut a very small tip off the piping bag so that I can pipe precise lines on the turtles’ bodies. The lines weren’t always clean, but it did the job!

Finally, after hours of hard work, the turtle cookies are complete!!