Let's Talk Filipino

Make your flavors taste richer: Introducing Ubeness

I love to cook and I love to bake! When I am not very busy with other things at home, I really enjoy creating new recipes and trying out recommended ones. My love of cooking and baking stems from the fact that I enjoyed watching my mom cook when I was young. Her pansit was the bomb! It was always present on every party or gathering we had back then and it was really delicious! Almost every weekend I remember her making ginataang bilo-bilo with langka and we enjoyed eating it after our afternoon siesta. 

And when it comes to desserts, her fruit salad was everyone's favorite, as well as her buco pandan. We weren't lucky enough to afford an oven when we were younger and even years later after we did get an oven, my mom didn't really bake a lot because she thought it was too expensive to buy the ingredients for baking and cost too much gas to keep the oven on. Looking back at how we were back then, and how I am now with all luxury of having a lot of kitchen appliances and all the possible baking gadgets I could have, I feel lucky and feel very blessed.

Pamana Foods

With more luck, I got the chance to have all those tastes I remember in my youth (and more!) in flavored extracts courtesy of Pamana Foods. Thanks to the ingenuity of entrepreneurs Rhea and Dennis Rogacion here in the Netherlands, the flavors of buco pandan, langka and even mango and ube, are now available here in Europe. Their products are sold under the name Ubeness, with other flavors packaged as Buco Pandanness, Langkaness and Mangoness. Rhea and Dennis were also the makers of the first Filipino ice cream brand made in Europe, the Luneta Ice Cream, as well as Guapito Premium Beer. The story of this dynamic duo is featured on GMA Network's "Stories of Hope" and I highly recommend you watch it by clicking this link here and be inspired!  

Flavor in a bottle: the extra richness

Why would I need these flavored extracts, you ask? A lot of these Filipino recipes, like the buco pandan or the ginataang bilo-bilo call for ingredients that are not easily available here in the Netherlands. The pandan leaves for instance and the young coconut is not always found in our Asian stores. Our langka , or jackfruit, is sometimes sold here in cans packaged as young chunks, mostly used for savory dishes. Just the ube itself is not an easy find. The closest we could get would be the sweet potato, and even that isn't always available at our local grocery stores. So I was very happy to learn that I now have these extracts to use in my recipes. When it comes to cakes and cookies and other pastries, the use of an extract or flavoring agent will definitely enhance a recipe's taste! And I am so happy with this new discovery!

I can't wait to try all my Ubeness products I have in my pantry right now, but for starters I simply experimented on making a mango cake using just a simple box of white cake mix, some mangoes and of course, the Mangoness extract. I was so curious how this would turn out. I simply followed the recipe of the cake mix, added 1 teaspoon of the mango extract and once baked, added some mango toppings before serving. It worked great! And the taste was quite delicious! One teaspoon made all the difference and made this simple recipe extra yummy and flavorful! Check out this video below to find out how my family loved the extra flavors!

Recently, I got the chance to upload a video featuring all four flavoured extracts of Pamana Foods. So please click here for the link. Let me know which flavors you'd love to try!

Available in Europe

If you happen to live here in the Netherlands or here in Europe and would like to try any of these flavoured extracts, check out Ubeness' Facebook page by clicking here for more information. For the Pamana Foods website, click here.  

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