Just about everything that Butter Half Bakery offers is audaciously sweet, from a tub of melty fudge brownies to a tray of sugared ube rolls, plump with ube jam. The company’s backstory, though, is bittersweet at best.
In 2024, “I was postpartum and missing home,” founder Riz del Rosario says of the Philippines, where she spent her first 10 years and later returned for college. “My parents aren’t able to be here because the laws changed, and I missed my mom and her cooking.”
While it wasn’t the same as a true reunion, del Rosario realized she could conjure the spirit of her faraway family—and connect with a Filipino community in greater Charleston—by preparing the desserts that were so central to their time together.
Chief among them were the afore mentioned ube rolls, which have since emerged as a Butter Half bestseller. It was one of the first pastries that del Rosario attempted beyond the cookies and puddings that she knew every potential customer would instinctively grasp. With ube rolls, she had to make the dessert in such a way that its meaning was apparent even to eaters who didn’t have personal experience with purple yams or a lola to explain them.
The filling, ube halaya, “takes so much time and patience,” del Rosario says. “I used to make it with my grandparents: It was a whole day process. For two hours, we’d hand-grate coconut in a big wok. It was a labor of love.”
Photo by @sincerelychristinaleigh
Del Rosario pauses as her voice cracks, remembering how the family kitchen was also where her mother wrapped rice in banana leaves to pay her children’s tuition bills.
“I’m sorry to get emotional,” she says. “I’m super passionate about this.”
After sampling del Rosario’s baking, Butter Half patrons might feel the same.
Butter Half is one of five featured vendors at Street Food Stories, a July 12, 2025 event hosted by Jadoon’s Park Circle Market in North Charleston, South Carolina on behalf of The Food Section. For more about Butter Half Bakery, visit @butterhalfbakerychs on Instagram.
No Comments