Ube Meets Goat Cheese In This Unexpected New Collaboration
As a Filipino, I’ve watched ube make the leap from family gatherings and neighborhood bakeries to grocery store shelves across America.
Some of those collaborations feel thoughtful. Others feel like companies discovered a purple ingredient and stopped asking questions.
LaClare Creamery’s new Ube Goat Cheese lands somewhere more interesting.
The Wisconsin-based cheesemaker recently introduced a limited-edition goat cheese that blends its signature chèvre with ube, the beloved Filipino purple yam known for its naturally sweet, nutty flavor and vibrant color.
For Filipinos, ube isn’t some new food trend. It’s the foundation of desserts like ube halaya, cakes, pastries, ice cream, and countless family recipes passed down through generations. Its flavor often gets compared to vanilla, though anyone who grew up eating it knows ube carries a character all its own.
That familiarity is what makes this particular collaboration intriguing.
Goat cheese already balances tangy and creamy flavors. Ube brings sweetness, earthiness, and color. On paper, the pairing makes more sense than it might initially sound.
LaClare says the cheese works across everything from salads and bagels to desserts and smoothie bowls. While the company leans heavily into the product’s eye-catching purple appearance, the flavor combination itself feels like more than a novelty play.
The bigger question any time ube enters the mainstream remains the same: does the product respect the ingredient’s roots?
At the very least, LaClare appears to acknowledge where ube comes from and why people love it in the first place. That’s a meaningful starting point.
Whether Ube Goat Cheese becomes your next charcuterie board staple is another conversation entirely. But among the growing wave of ube-inspired products hitting the market, this one might be unusual enough to warrant a taste test.
