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Chicago To Get Taste Of $100 Doughnut Made With Cristal And Gold Leaf

By Janet Rausa Fuller | September 27, 2016 5:28am

Underneath all that gold leaf is an ube cake doughnut filled with ube mousse and champagne jelly. [Manila Social Club]

LOGAN SQUARE — Over-the-top pastry alert: an ube doughnut made with a quarter-cup’s worth of Cristal champagne and coated in 24-karat gold leaf is coming to town.

Manila Social Club, the Brooklyn restaurant that makes the already-hyped Golden Cristal Ube Donut, plans to sell a limited number of them at Kultura Festival on Sunday at Emporium Arcade Bar, 2363 N. Milwaukee Ave.

One doughnut costs $100.

The only way to guarantee you’ll get one is if you pre-order on the restaurant’s website.

None of the sparkling gold confections will be sold on-site, though Manila Social Club chef Bjorn DelaCruz will have three other, more wallet-friendly doughnuts on offer — plain ube, gin-calamansi and buko pandan — for $3 each, no pre-ordering necessary. (You also can order the special doughnut for Monday pickup at a Chicago location to be determined.)

There’s no per-person limit on orders for the Golden Donut, which underneath all that gold is a deep purple thanks to ube, a purple yam. DelaCruz fills each doughnut with ube mousse and a jelly made from Cristal, before coating it in Cristal icing and applying the gold leaf.

The gold "doesn't add anything to the flavor," DelaCruz told Forbes. You’ll taste the Cristal, though.

It’s the second year for Kultura Festival, a celebration of Filipino-American food and arts that brings together local and out-of-town chefs.

Janet tells us a little more about Ube.

Chrissy Camba of Maddy’s Dumpling House, Kristine Subido of Pecking Order Catering and Rampelle Aguilar of Oxtail Filipino Inspired are among the Chicago participants. Visiting chefs include Dorothy Hernandez of Sarap Detroit, and AC Boral of the pop-ups Rice and Shine and Naks Tacos in Long Beach, California.

Last year’s event drew 1,076 people, more than double what organizer Sarahlynn Pablo of the website Filipino Kitchen had expected. Pablo has booked Surf Bar, next door to Emporium Arcade, for more space this year.

There’s more happening, including workshops on Filipino martial arts and the ancient Filipino script called baybayin; a balut-eating contest (the Filipino delicacy is a duck egg containing the almost-fully-formed embryo); and an adobo contest for home cooks.

The festival is 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tickets are $20, with discounts for seniors, students and kids. You can pay at the door but advance ticket-holders get priority access into the festival, Pablo said.

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