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Amlag’s in-progress version, for now, layers green coconut jelly, palm seeds, mung beans, brown sugar–sweetened saba bananas, jackfruit, macapuno (young coconut strings cooked in sugar), chunks of Hood Famous ube cheesecake, and Rice Krispies.

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Meaning “mix” in Tagalog, this summery snack’s roll call of ingredients varies, but at its most basic contains a combo of shaved ice, evaporated milk, ice cream, plus fruit, some kind of jelly, and a crunch factor-maybe dried coconut or glutinous rice flakes. There’s a spectrum of customers, says Amlag, among them,“ones who know exactly what they want and ones not really familiar with the flavors.” It’s a sort of cheesecake blind date that often requires a bit of customer education, something she’s ready to do, especially for the menu’s newest addition, halo-halo. She bakes a whole slew of flavors beyond the signature ube that are rooted in the Filipino palate: white chocolate with rosy-pink swirls of guava, mango with calamansi (a ubiquitous citrus in the Philippines squeezed onto just about anything), and coconut pandan-a tropical herb that’s altogether floral, vanilla, and delicately grassy. In 2016, Amlag opened a permanent home for her heretofore “hood famous” cheesecakes, which these days are known citywide.

Collaboration is common amongst these three Filipina-run ventures-for example, Central District Ice Cream Company’s scoopable, frozen version of that popular ube cheesecake. Hood Famous brews one of its new single-origin styles. There’s also Kalsada Coffee, a locally grown business that’s reviving Seattle’s century-old connection to Philippine coffee farmers. Two newcomers, Hood Famous Bakeshop and Central District Ice Cream Company, serve uniquely Filipino-inspired treats.

In the realm of all that is luscious, creamy, and quite often ultra purple, Seattle is experiencing a mini growth spurt of Filipino dessert shops. Now, a new wave of Filipino Americans uplift the traditional flavors of home through a sweeter endeavor: dessert. But in 2016-in the very same week-both Inay’s and Isla Manila Bar and Grill shuttered and left our sparse Filipino cuisine landscape even more barren. Sure, there’s a handful of mom-and-pop places that serve crispy lumpia or batches of quintessential pork adobo. Of the many cuisines that take hold when immigrants land in the Pacific Northwest, Filipino food hasn’t quite been one of them. The result, a perfect specimen of Instagram bait that’s topped with ripples of ube jam and sits on a coconut-butter biscuit crust. She made it with ube, which lends its jewel-toned hue and subtle, earthy sweetness to baked goods. For these meals, Amlag baked cheesecake, but tempered its classic Americana with a Filipino touch.

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In 2013, she and her husband, Geo Quibuyen, one half of local hip-hop duo Blue Scholars, launched the temporarily retired Food and Sh*t popup, in which the duo doled out many a Filipino dish full of flavors they both grew up eating. Owner Chera Amlag fell into baking as a kid with a Betty Crocker cookbook, in a childhood home mostly devoid of sweets. Yet, it’s the exact ingredient that helped amass a cult following for Hood Famous Bakeshop, a small, subterranean bakery off Shilshole Avenue in Ballard. For the uninitiated, ube sounds more like a car-sharing app than the sweet, violet yam that it is.