If you think the picture for this article is blackberry ice cream, it’s not! It’s a very old and extremely popular dessert made in the Philippines from Ube, called Ube Halaya. Ube is in the sweet potato family and it’s naturally purple. Ube is sweeter than it’s orange companion and has a more nutty and vanilla like taste. Sometimes it is confused with Taro, another root vegetable. Ube is often used for sweets and doesn’t hit your glycemic index so it won’t spike your sugars badly. “Ube is the Tagalog [Filipino dialect] word for tuber that comes for the Dioscorea alata L. plant. The tuber is bright lavender in color,” Richelle Rada, RD, LD, a nutrition coach, says. “In my culture, it is commonly made into a jam called ube halaya, then added to foods like Halo-Halo…