Chicago chemist-turned-baker has created an ube croissant that’s totally worth the trip
Available only twice a week at a cafe in Logan Square, the vibrant purple pastries are a gateway to Filipino food culture
Mirachelle Anselmo is a chemist by training but a food scientist by temperament. As an undergraduate student at North Central College in Naperville, she conducted research on the Maillard reaction — the scientific name for the browning of food — to see if different kinds of sugars formed different products post-reaction. While working toward her master’s degree in organometallic chemistry at DePaul University, she helped customers at Floriole, a patisserie in Lincoln Park.
When Chicago went into lockdown during the spring of 2020, Anselmo, like many others, began baking more at home. She began with simpler experiments: sourdough starter and banana bread.
“The typical pandemic starter kit,” she said.
She progressed to braided chocolate babka and other enriched-dough pastries, and started selling her baked goods at local fundraisers. Eventually, Anselmo set her sights on what food writer and chef Claire Saffitz declared “the highest achievement in all of pastrydom”: the French croissant — with a nod to her own Filipino roots.
On a warm, sticky day in June 2021, Anselmo made her first batch of ube croissants.
“It was an absolute fever dream to think I could develop an ube croissant, filled with ube halaya,” she posted on Instagram, alongside a photo of a marbled cream-andpurple croissant. “That dream has now become reality, and that reality tastes really good.”
Developing the recipe took months of painstaking trial and error, not to mention dozens of disappointing batches. Now, almost two years later, she has built up a following that anticipates her vibrant purple pastries with the same eagerness you might expect from sneakerheads waiting for a limited-edition shoe drop.
Anselmo’s croissants — with ube, a purple yam common in the Philippines, incorporated into the dough itself — are striking in color and shape, with their modern, slashed tops. They also highlight ube in multiple forms.
In the latest iteration, Anselmo mixes powdered ube with confectioner’s sugar to dust. Ube (pronounced OOO-beh) also stars in the homemade ube halaya — a jammy violet spread typically made with grated ube, three kinds of milk (coconut, condensed and