It was just an impromptu food trip in and around Lapaz market a few months ago when I discovered this ube brazo de mercedes from the Lapaz Bakeshop. I got to taste and take home this ube dessert that later on became a staple at home.
Lapaz Bakeshop sits on the corner of Tinda Lapaz right across Grand Dame Hotel. A restaurant named Lapaz Kitchenette was the previous locator of the space and it was famous for it's PhP59 buffet. The bakeshop is among the bigger "small town" bakeshops in the city with it's wide range of breads, pastries and cakes plus shorts snack items. It even has branches in some towns in Iloilo including one in my hometown, Sta. Barbara.
It was a quick side trip made by Sir Eugene that time that introduced me to this ube variant of brazos. He bought a few slices of this dessert and brought it inside Madge Cafe inside the market. It was perfect with the cafe's native coffee and the filling is somewhat like ube halaya. The meringue is just shaded with food coloring but overall the dessert is very good and in fact still a novelty item as it's the only one of it's kind I knew of so far.
Instead of confectioners sugar sprinkled on top, it has skimmed milk that gives it more flavour and texture complementing the rich ube flavour. A whole roll yields around 20 thin slices and sold at PhP22.50 per slice. Almost priced like most brazo de mercedes' or maybe a little more but hey, it's ube and you won't regret you bought it. You might even get another slice or even another roll!