Pseudo Tau Foo Fah

In Malaysia, there is a dessert made out of soy beans called Tau Foo Fah. The best way to describe it would be a pudding made out of soy beans served with a sugar syrup. Both my kids love this and most weekends, when we go to the market, they will each buy a bowl of this pudding and take it home in plastic containers. You can choose whether to have normal sugar syrup or gula melaka and both the kids prefer the Gula Melaka variant. The pudding is sold hot but sometimes, it's nicer when you keep it in the fridge for a while. Hot or cold, it's a favourite - any time of the day.

Making a 'real' Tau Foo Fah is extremely difficult or so I am told. However, making a pseudo Tau Foo Fah is a piece of cake!

This recipe was given to me by one of my friends at work and I tried it out. She said that it wasn't as nice as the one you get from the food stalls but it was a pretty good version nonetheless. She also said it was lovely served with cold lychees in syrup rather than making your own sugar syrup.



This is the recipe.

Ingredients
1 litre soy milk
1 tbsp + 1 tsp Agar-agar powder
600 ml water
1 tin lychees or longan in syrup

Method
Combine agar-agar powder with water and stir well till dissolved. Add the water to the milk and bring to the boil. Pour into a large serving bowl and cover with a piece of plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming. Let cool before placing in the fridge. Serve with chilled lychees.

The soya bean 'jelly' doesn't really solidify but is firm enough to scoop out. When serving, I used a flat spoon to skim a layer of the soy bean jelly - just like the real Tau Foo Fah is served.




The kids loved this version although they prefer the original one. Still, this is a really easy dessert to make. It kind of resembles the Almond Jelly with Lychee desserts you sometimes find in restuarants but I think I prefer this to the almond jelly. This is a great dessert to make quickly, something that tastes great and a dessert that most people will be surprised was home made!