Regina Troy Barrios

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Good Shepherd Convent Baguio Ube Jam

<p>Every Filipino kid I know seems to have this memory. Mine starts when I was eight, maybe nine: standing in the soft early morning light outside Good Shepherd in Baguio. The line is already long, spilling down Gibraltar Road in a patient curve. Nobody leaves. We are all here for the same thing — two small jars of ube jam. That is all you are allowed, so you wait to get your two jars, then go home.</p><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779091407042mindanaoetc.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">This is the ube jam many Filipinos remember and love | Photo: Tracy&#x27;s Take on Instagram</span></span></span></div><p>This was the ube jam every Filipino family brought back from Baguio. It made its way down the mountain in paper bags and boxes, tucked carefully into bus compartments and suitcases. We ate it straight from the jar, or spread thick over hot pandesal at breakfast, stirred into halo-halo until it turned everything lavender, baked in cakes for birthdays and fiestas. It was — and still is — dense, rich and buttery in the best way. Nobody called it artisanal, or anything so self-conscious. It was simply ube: thick and smooth, in a deep purple shade, sweet but never cloying. It had a quality that kept us going back for more.</p><p>That was then. </p><p>Now ube is in my social feeds and in articles written by people who have never stood in that line in Baguio, and who’ve  have never held those two precious jars on the long trip home. </p><div><br/></div><h2><strong>The world&#x27;s new obsession</strong></h2><p><a href="https://about.starbucks.com/stories/2026/starbucks-spring-menu-arrives-with-new-chai-ube-and-coconut-drinks-plus-the-return-of-lavender-favorites/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Starbucks rolled out an iced ube coconut macchiato across its U.S. stores this past March</a>, after the drink became a runaway hit at its Reserve locations. <a href="https://www.fromkora.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kora</a>, the Filipino-inspired bakery in Sunnyside, Queens that began as a pandemic home-kitchen project, <a href="https://hoodline.com/2025/03/popular-filipino-doughnut-shop-kora-opens-permanent-location-in-queens-new-york/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">had a 10,000-person waitlist for its ube brioche doughnuts before opening its permanent shop in March 2025</a>. It still draws lines down the block. Trader Joe&#x27;s ube mochi pancake and waffle mix has been a consistent bestseller since 2020. And ube is now a popular flavor for biscuits, ice cream, cakes, and even purple-veined gouda.</p><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779091630303Kora.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Kora&#x27;s dramatic, decadent ube brioche | Photo: From Kora </span></span></span></div><p>Then came the accolades. In 2024, <a href="https://www.fooddive.com/news/t-hasegawa-ube-flavor-of-the-year-2024-philippines-purple-natural-color-flavor/702746/https://www.fooddive.com/news/t-hasegawa-ube-flavor-of-the-year-2024-philippines-purple-natural-color-flavor/702746/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">T. Hasegawa USA named ube its Flavor of the Year</a>. Food writers across London, New York, and beyond call it the next matcha. Forecasts project a compound annual growth rate of 6.9 percent from 2025 to 2035, reflecting rising global demand for ube-based products and flavoring. <a href="https://news.tv5.com.ph/breaking/read/dti-over-3m-generated-from-ube-exports-in-2025" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Last year alone, the Philippines exported nearly 1.7 million kilograms of ube products worth over $3.2 million—up more than 20 percent</a>—with almost half shipped to the United States, double the volume from the year before.</p><p>The world has fallen in love with ube. In the process, it has changed it.</p><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779091803224Starbucks.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Starbucks&#x27; ube drink, designed to go global | Photo: Starbucks </span></span></span></div><p>For Jeremy Villanueva, executive chef at <a href="https://kasaandkin.co.uk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Kasa &amp; Kin</a> in London, that change is not something to dismiss. &quot;It&#x27;s not just a gimmick of something purple. There&#x27;s a soul to its consumption. It&#x27;s part of the culture, it&#x27;s part of our heritage,&quot; <a href="https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/chefs/jeremy-villanueva" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">he has said</a>. &quot;Ube, for me, is not a fad. Even if it passes, it will still be part of our culture.&quot; </p><p>For many of us, though, that sense of heritage traces back to a hillside in Baguio, with a nun, a stack of firewood, and freshly harvested purple yam.</p><div><br/></div><h2><strong>The nun with the recipe</strong></h2><p>In 1976, the <a href="https://www.goodshepherd-asiapacific.org.au/project/146" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Good Shepherd Sisters faced a problem</a>. They ran a work-study program for Cordilleran girls—students who worked in the convent kitchen to fund their own schooling—and had very little money to keep it going. They began by making and selling strawberry jam made from local fruit. But strawberries are seasonal. The sisters needed something else</p><p>It was Sister Fidelis Atienza, a Batangueña nun and inventive cook who refused to waste food, who turned to ube.<a href="https://www.ifexconnect.com/story/nun-of-the-above" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> A friend had suggested she try to replicate Tantamco&#x27;s, the original ube halaya maker in Baguio</a>. Armed with a pile of fresh purple yam, a stack of firewood, and a lot of patience, she began working out a way to turn it into jam.</p><p>When she had a working recipe, Sister Mary Assumption Ocampo refined it further, constantly asking her fellow nuns for feedback—<em>&quot;Tama ba ang tamis?&quot;</em> <em>&quot;Malinamnam ba?&quot;</em>—adjusting the recipe until it became the ube jam that Filipinos would come to know.</p><p>That recipe has not meaningfully changed since. It still uses fresh ube from Cordillera farmers, Alaska milk, Anchor butter, no artificial coloring, no preservatives. Its shelf life is still one month—because without chemicals, it has a natural lifespan.</p><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779092006706Good Shepherd.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">The Good Shepherd Jam&#x27;s back label | Photo: Wally Flores on Facebook</span></span></span></div><p>The jam became the cornerstone of <a href="https://www.goodshepherd-asiapacific.org.au/project/146" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mountain Maid Training and Development Foundation</a>, the Good Shepherd sisters&#x27; social enterprise. <a href="https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2015608/sharing-the-mission-of-good-shepherd" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Today the organization supports around 370 young people between 16 and 24 years old</a>—working students who earn their education through the sale of jams, cookies, peanut brittle, and other convent-made products. Ube jam still accounts for roughly half of all sales.</p><p>Sister Fidelis lived to be 102. On the day she died—March 20, 2021—the store had to close because of the queue of people who came to pay their respects. The city mayor had to be called. Even then, many would not go home without securing their jars.</p><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1779092115066Mountain Maid ube jam FB.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">The Good Shepherd Sisters still maintain a two-bottle limit | Photo: Tracy&#x27;s Take on Instagram</span></span></span><strong>Made the old-fashioned way</strong> </div><p>Somewhere in the world right now, someone is tasting ube for the first time—perhaps folded into a croissant, stirred into a latte, or rippling through a wheel of purple-veined cheese. They will be delighted by the color, surprised by the flavor, already reaching for their phone to take a photo. That’s fine. That’s how ingredients travel these days.</p><p>But the first ube to go viral did so without TikTok or an influencer circuit. It spread the old-fashioned way: from person to person, jar by jar, generation by generation. It spread because it was made with care and without shortcuts. The nuns at Good Shepherd were trying to keep their students&#x27; school fees paid. In doing so, they made a jam the whole country would come to love.</p><p>It is 2026 now, and it has been years since I stood in that line in Baguio. Maybe it&#x27;s the same for you. Maybe you&#x27;re having ube in London, or ordering it in New York, or watching it swirl through your morning coffee. But it always circles back to Gibraltar Road—to a convent kitchen that smelled of butter and freshly pounded yam. This ube jam was made with care for something practical. For a generation of Filipinos, it became the ube standard.</p><div><br/></div><p>Good Shepherd ube jam is available at Good Shepherd Convent, 15 Gibraltar Road, Mines View, Baguio City 2600, Philippines. Telephone numbers are (074) 424-2496 or (074) 424-1109. The Convent still maintains a two-jar limit per person for its ube jam.</p>

<p>Long before ube became a global flavor trend in Starbucks drinks, New York bakeries, and viral desserts, generations of Filipinos were already lining up at Good Shepherd in Baguio for the rich purple jam that quietly defined the country’s idea of ube.</p>

Long before ube became a global flavor trend in Starbucks drinks, New York bakeries, and viral desserts, generations of Filipinos were already lining up at Good Shepherd in Baguio for the rich purple jam that quietly defined the country’s idea of ube.

The First Ube That Went Viral Had No TikTok

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The First Ube That Went Viral Had No TikTok

Troy Barrios

Published May 14, 2026 04:20 PM PHT

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Updated May 18, 2026 04:36 PM PHT

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good shepherd ube

ube jam

baguio ube

filipino food

ube history

philippine cuisine

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philippine desserts

cordilleras

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