Over the weekends, most of my time were spent in brooklyn. My saturday was always packed with activities like piano, yoga, and ballet. Much to my dismay, I went about my Saturday mornings knowing that I would be allowed to eat whatever I wanted afterwards. I would go to street carts to get cheong fan, a small hole in the wall place for pan fried dumplings and sesame pancakes, and boba stalls for ice cold milk tea. On special occasions, we would visit the tofu lady for some freshly made rice noodles and a big plastic container of hot silken tofu pudding and golden ginger syrup to bring home with us. It’s comforting, it silky soft, and very lightly sweetened.
A couple nights ago, I had a craving for warm tofu pudding but being that it was close to 9pm I knew my tofu lady was at home probably preparing a batch of fresh tofu for tomorrow morning. Eager to satisfy my craving, I headed to my fridge and rummaged through it hoping to find something sweet. A muffin... no. A frozen piece of chocolate cake... not feeling it right now. A bun? Sure but eh. Mmhmm, maybe I should just go to sleep? Oh, what's this? Some leftover silken tofu sealed away in a glass container. Wait a minute… it might just work. I poured some honey and water over it and stuck it in the microwave, hoping to get an outcome similar to tofu pudding. 1 minutes and 30 seconds later, I’m hovering over a hot bowl of makeshift tofu pudding. Done in less than one minute, slurping down the rest of the honey water and I headed off to bed. Now, anytime I want tofu pudding without access to my hook up I pray that I bought a pack of silken tofu so that I can make a DIY tofu pudding in just a couple of minutes. What is your favorite tofu recipe?
Sweet & Silky Tofu Pudding
Ingredients:
1 package of silken tofu *
1 cup or 118g of water
1/3cup or 65g of Chinese cane sugar, rock sugar, or white sugar
1 large knob of ginger
Instructions:
Cut your ginger in half lengthwise to expose more ginger and add to a pot along with water and cane sugar. Set on medium and bring to a boil for 5 minutes. The ginger should be fragrant and the sugar dissolved.
Next, gently scoop out spoonfuls of silken tofu into a bowl and pour over the hot syrup. Enjoy!
Notes:
You need to use silken tofu. No exceptions. Soft, medium, firm, and extra firm won’t give you the soft and silky texture you are looking for in this dessert.
If you like to enjoy your tofu pudding hot, microwave for 30 seconds after the warm ginger syrup has been poured over it. Or if everything’s cold, assemble it and then stick in the microwave for 1 minute. Enjoy!
You can use any sugar you like but I love to go with Chinese cane sugar. Its traditional to what I grew up eating, has a light sweet taste as well as a beautiful golden brown color to the syrup. However, if you can’t find it, you can use light brown sugar or regular white. Really any sugar that doesn't have a strong flavor is good.
If you don’t like ginger you can omit it but it’s so so so good with it. It's pretty subtle but brings balance and flavor to the tofu pudding. You can also add different flavorings like matcha, cinnamon, etc. totally up to you but the OG flavor is 1000% ginger so I definitely recommend it.