April 9, 2015

I’m always looking for yummy things to make quickly. This recipe is so ridiculously quick and easy that it makes me angry. It makes me angry because I messed around with two tofu pudding recipes before this one. One involved lemon and the other straight up cocoa and they were extremely difficult because one involved boiling soy milk into pudding from scratch and the other was just finicky flavour wise. I eventually got them to work but I then read about the idea of adding melted chocolate to tofu. I was intrigued and after researching a bunch of recipes I tweaked them until I came up with this one.

For those of you worried about this tasting like tofu, it is really masked nicely by all the other flavours. That’s why there are so many tiny additions of things like rum, cinnamon, orange, and hot pepper flakes. These tiny flavours aren’t very strong on their own but they come together to highlight the chocolate. The tofu really just acts as a creamy base for all of it! One last thing I’ll mention is that using 75% cocoa and higher really creates a strong mousse like chocolate flavour. The lower you go in cocoa percentage the more the pudding taste like fake chocolate. You’re welcome to mess around with this recipe as you like, it took me two tries to get it to the way we like it! Let me know if you change anything :D

Notes:
a) To make this recipe totally vegan use dairy free chocolate and maple syrup or agave instead of honey.
b) To make a great workout snack we added a scoop of plain protein powder to a bowl of the tofu pudding and it was great.
c) If you know you like a more bitter chocolate taste, add less sweetener. You can always add more at the end if need be.

Martina’s Chocolate Tofu Pudding

200 g dark chocolate (at least 75% cocoa solids)
700 g silken aka soft tofu
3 tablespoons of honey (or maple syrup or agave)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon dark rum (if you don’t drink, you can leave it out or use rum extract)
1 large pinch of dried chilli flakes
1 large pinch of sea salt
Dash cinnamon
1/4 tablespoon zest of orange (optional)

1. Using a double boiler (or the cheap Martina method) start melting the chocolate.

2. Pour your tofu into the food processor. If your tofu is packaged in water, you’ll need to squeeze out the extra water by putting the tofu in a clean tea towel and giving it a couple gentle squeezes. If your tofu is too water-logged it will make your pudding taste watery.

3. Dump in all the remaining ingredients (except the chocolate which is still melting) and blitz like crazy for 1 to 2 minutes, or until totally smooth.

4. Last step! Add the melted chocolate and blitz until combined. Test the pudding and see if you want to add anything else to it.

6. Divide it up into smaller bowls and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes. The pudding will thicken and taste better when cool.

Suggestions to make it extra yummy: fresh berries, chopped bananas, homemade whipped cream layered like a trifle, crumbled cookies, poured on sponge cake! My next big step is to see if I can make a chai tea infused chocolate tofu pudding. Let me know if you have success with this recipe or if you’d be willing to try it. Happy non-baking!