Inspired by imagawayaki (obanyaki), these ube pancake sandwiches add a Filipino spin on a popular Japanese street snack traditionally filled with sweet adzuki bean. In this recipe, ube halaya is the filling.
If you’re wondering what ube and ube halaya are, I wrote a comprehensive guide about the purple tuber and how we cook it at home.
A Cook’s Guide to Purple Yam (Ube)
Purple yam, or ube, is Dioscorea alata, a purple-colored tuber. It is not taro nor a similarly-colored cultivar of sweet potato. Read more about ube and see how we cook ube halaya at home.
If you’ve read the article linked above from start to finish, you will appreciate more the idea behind substituing ube halaya for the traditional sweet adzuki bean filling in this recipe.
Ube Pancake Sandwiches
Recipe byIt's difficult to specify a cooking temperature and cooking time because a lot depends on the material and quality of the imagawayaki pan. Ours is cast iron which means it retains heat better and longer. After preheating the pan, setting the stove on low and keeping it on low worked best. If your pan is thinner or of a different material, the length of cooking time and cooking temperature will vary.
Equipment
- Imagawayaki Pan
Ingredients
- 2 large eggs
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- cooking oil for brushing the pan
- 1 ½ cups ube halaya
Instructions
- In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and salt.
- Pour in the honey and milk. Whisk until smooth.
- Sift the flour and baking powder directly into the egg-milk mixture.
- Whisk until smooth.
- Cover the bowl and rest the pancake batter in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
- Heat the imagawayaki pan on the stove and brush the molds with oil.
- Pour pancake batter into half of the molds. DO NOT OVERFILL. Half-filling the molds is ideal.
- When the batter starts to bubble along the edges, place about two tablespoonfuls of ube halaya on top of the batter.
- Fill the rest of the molds with the same amount of batter.
- Loosen an ube-topped pancake and carefully flip on top of a plain pancake to sandwich the filling inside. Cook for a few minutes until the batter is cooked through and the filling is hot.
- Repeat for the rest of the batter and ube halaya.
- Serve the ube pancake sandwiches while hot.
