Some pastries tell the story of a whole country. The ensaymada is one of them: a Filipino brioche rolled into a spiral, incredibly soft, brushed with softened butter, dusted with sugar and then covered with grated cheese. That sweet-and-savoury marriage is disconcerting at first glance and becomes an obsession from the first bite. Add ube powder, the purple yam from the Philippines, and the brioche takes on a deep mauve shade and a mild, vanilla-like, faintly nutty note that answers the saltiness of the cheese perfectly. Ube ensaymada is today the star of Manila bakeries and of Filipino cafés from Los Angeles to Dubai. The good news: it works very well in a French kitchen, with a mixer, an ordinary oven and a little patience. Here is our full recipe, tested with our Kinampay ube powder from the Visayas, with the exact proportions, the spiral shaping method and the tips for a stringy, pull-apart crumb.
The ingredient in this recipe: Natural Ube Powder 200 g — 16.90 €, 100% purple yam, one single ingredient, no additives, shipped from Aix-en-Provence.
What exactly is an ensaymada?
The ensaymada descends from the Majorcan ensaïmada, brought to the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period and then widely reinvented on the spot. The Majorcan version is thin, laminated with lard and simply sweetened; the Filipino version is a brioche rich in egg yolks and butter, thicker, softer, and above all crowned with its signature trio: butter, sugar and queso de bola, the aged Edam-style cheese found on every Filipino table at Christmas.
It is a cake for sharing and for celebrations, served in the afternoon with a thick hot chocolate (the famous tsokolate) or a coffee. Its snail shape is not decorative: it comes from rolling the dough into a long rope, which creates successive layers and gives that stringy crumb you pull apart with your fingertips. The ube version took hold in the 2010s, carried by the purple wave that swept Filipino baking — and by the fact that the taste of ube, mild and round, gets on particularly well with butter and cheese.
Ensaymada, ube brioche, pandesal: what are the differences?
Three purple leavened breads, three different uses. Our ube brioche is a classic French brioche, baked in a loaf tin or plaited, with no topping: you slice it and butter it. Ube pandesal is a morning roll, barely sweet, rolled in breadcrumbs and meant to be dipped in coffee. The ensaymada sits between the two: a dough richer than pandesal, shaped individually into a spiral, and above all finished with a sweet-savoury topping that turns it into a dessert in its own right.
If you are looking for a more European sweet roll, have a look at our ube cinnamon rolls, which share the rolling technique but with a cinnamon centre and a cream cheese icing.
The ingredients for ube ensaymada
These proportions make 12 medium-sized ensaymadas (brioche moulds or 8 cm muffin cups). Allow 40 minutes of active work, about 2 hr 30 of proving and 15 minutes of baking.
For the dough:
- 400 g of T45 wheat flour (strong bread flour if you can find it)
- 25 g of Ubedia ube powder (3 level tablespoons)
- 60 g of caster sugar
- 7 g of dried baker's yeast (or 20 g of fresh yeast)
- 5 g of fine salt
- 180 ml of lukewarm whole milk (around 35 °C)
- 3 egg yolks
- 90 g of soft unsalted butter, diced
For the signature topping:
- 80 g of softened unsalted butter
- 60 g of caster sugar (or icing sugar for a finer finish)
- 80 g of finely grated aged Edam — failing that, a young Mimolette or a mature Gouda do the job very well
On the dosage of the powder, 25 g for 400 g of flour gives a clear colour with no bitterness. If you would rather adjust it to your own preparations, our benchmarks are set out in the guide to ube powder dosage.
The recipe step by step
- Wake up the yeast. Dissolve the dried yeast in the lukewarm milk with a teaspoon of sugar taken from the 60 g. Leave it to froth for 10 minutes. If nothing happens, the yeast is dead or the milk was too hot: start again, this step determines everything that follows.
- Mix the dry ingredients. In the bowl of the mixer, sift the flour and the ube powder together, then add the remaining sugar and the salt. Sifting matters: ube powder tends to form small lumps that would leave darker spots in the crumb.
- Form the dough. Pour in the milk-and-yeast mixture and the egg yolks. Knead for 5 minutes on low speed with the dough hook, until you have a smooth dough that is still slightly sticky.
- Work in the butter. Add the soft butter cube by cube, continuing to knead at medium speed. Allow 10 to 12 minutes: the dough should turn smooth and glossy and pull cleanly away from the sides. This is the windowpane test — stretched between your fingers, it should form a translucent veil without tearing.
- First prove. Cover with a damp tea towel and leave to rise for 1 hr 30 at room temperature, until the dough has doubled in volume. In a cool kitchen, a switched-off oven with the light on makes an excellent proving box.
- Divide and roll out. Knock the dough back gently and divide it into 12 pieces of about 65 g. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece into a thin 12 × 20 cm rectangle. Brush with a little melted butter.
- Roll and coil. Roll the rectangle up along its length to get a long rope, stretch it gently to 30 cm, then coil it on itself like a snail. Tuck the end under the spiral and place it in the buttered mould.
- Second prove. Leave to rise for another 45 minutes to 1 hour, long enough for the spirals to swell and fill the moulds.
- Bake. Bake at 170 °C fan for 13 to 15 minutes. The ensaymadas should be only just set, barely golden at the edges: baking them longer dries the crumb out and dulls the purple.
- Cool before topping. Turn them out onto a rack and wait until they are lukewarm. A topping spread on a piping-hot brioche would melt and run instead of staying creamy.
The butter-sugar-cheese topping, the real secret
This is what sets an ensaymada apart from a plain purple brioche. Work the softened butter with a spatula until it is perfectly supple, then spread a generous layer over the top of each lukewarm brioche. Dust immediately with the sugar — it will settle slightly into the butter — then finish with the finely grated cheese.
The order matters: butter, then sugar, then cheese. The other way round, the cheese slides off and the sugar sits on the surface without gripping. On the choice of cheese, aged Edam remains the Filipino reference for its milky, salty note, but a mature Gouda brings a hint of hazelnut that goes remarkably well with ube. Avoid cheeses that are too powerful (aged Comté, Parmesan), which overwhelm the mildness of the tuber.
For a more dessert-like version, some Manila bakeries add a spoonful of ube halaya in the middle of the spiral before the second prove. It is excellent, but keep that variation for people who genuinely like things sweet: between the ube jam and the sugar in the topping, the balance tips quickly.
Getting the purple colour of your ensaymadas right
A purple brioche that comes out of the oven grey is the classic disappointment. Three factors almost always explain the problem. First, the quality of the powder: a cut or pale powder will never survive baking. Our powder is 100% Kinampay purple yam, with no additives, and the colour comes solely from the dried tuber. Then the temperature: above 180 °C, the natural pigments brown at the edges. 170 °C is the right compromise between browning the crust and holding the purple. Finally the baking time: 15 minutes is enough for 65 g pieces, beyond that you lose both the softness and the shade.
One last detail: whole milk gives a softer, slightly pink-tinged purple, while a neutral plant drink lets a bluer mauve come through. Both work, it is a question of visual taste. To understand exactly where this pigment comes from, our page on the natural purple colour of ube sets out the whole mechanism.
Storage, freezing and variations
Ensaymadas are ideally eaten the same day, lukewarm. They keep for 2 days in an airtight box at room temperature; give them 20 seconds in the microwave to bring back the softness of day one. Cheese does not like the fridge, which hardens the butter and dries the crumb: avoid it.
To get ahead, freeze the brioches without their topping, just after baking and cooling. They keep for 2 months. Thaw at room temperature, reheat for 5 minutes at 150 °C, then apply the topping fresh.
As for variations, a cream cheese version (beaten with a little icing sugar) is a pleasant replacement for the butter-and-sugar duo, for a creamier and less sweet result. And if you like sweet-savoury purple pairings, our selection of ube recipes brings together both the Filipino classics and the French adaptations.
Which ube powder should you choose for your ensaymadas?
A leavened dough puts powder through a hard test: long hydration, proving, baking. That is where the difference in quality shows. At Ubedia, our powder is 100% purple yam, one single ingredient, sourced directly from growers in the Visayas, with full traceability from field to bag, batch by batch, with no additives and no added colouring.
The 200 g size at 16.90 € is the right calibre for home baking: it covers eight batches of ensaymadas, or a mix of brioches, lattes and smoothies. For a first try, the 100 g size at 12.90 € is more than enough. And if you want to explore pairings, the Duo Rituel at 29.90 € combines a 200 g natural powder with a flavoured powder of your choice — the coconut flavour works particularly well in a brioche dough. Every size and every buying benchmark is gathered in our guide to buying ube powder, and the full background on the tuber is in our ultimate guide to ube.
Over to you
Ube ensaymada takes a little time, but no unreachable technique: a well-kneaded leavened dough, careful rolling, a short bake and a topping applied at the right moment. The result — a purple spiral, soft, buttery and lightly salty — is worth every minute of proving. Order your 200 g of ube powder and start your first batch this weekend.
