I went through a phase of making my own taufu fah (sweet tofu pudding aka soy pudding) from scratch on a near-daily basis, using raw soy beans, tapioca starch and GDL (glucono delta lactone), and it always turned out fine without a hitch. Just do a search on this website for previous posts on homemade taufu fah which didn’t need you to pre-soak the soy beans overnight and you’ll be able to find my recipe for it.
Then one day, it failed. So I started down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what went wrong – was it the batch of soy beans, the GDL, the thermometer or kitchen scales giving false readings, etc.?
It was painful. I had to go through the process of elimination by systematically replacing each ingredient to get to the source of the problem.
I finally figured out what went wrong (I’ll cover it in a future post, maybe) but over the course of testing different points of failure, I got tired of sourcing different batches of soy beans and blending/extracting them so I replaced them with bottled soy drink instead.
That worked a treat, so this easy version of Taufu Fah was added to the the collection of recipes I featured in my recent Malaysian Ingredients Made Easy video on Malaysian Palm Sugar (Gula Melaka).
FYI serving Taufu Fah with Gula Melaka is quite common in Malaysia, though I appreciate that in many East Asian countries you’re more inclined to find it with a white sugar & ginger syrup.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/DKOISb1Jnhg
While the recipe is easy enough, there is still room for it to fail, so watch this 60-second follow-up video here to make sure you caught the nuance in my recipe: https://youtube.com/shorts/mQS8jrvtclE
Recipe For Easy Taufu Fah (Soy Pudding) with Gula Melaka (Malaysian Palm Sugar)
INGREDIENTS:
750ml soy drink (unsweetened)
½ tsp GDL (glucono delta lactone)
2 tsp tapioca starch
2 tsp water
Syrup:
100ml water
150g Malaysian palm sugar
2 slices ginger
Equipment:
Thick glass bowl or similar as mould
Kitchen towel
Lid for mould
Thermometer
METHOD:
- Heat soy drink to between 90-95’C.
- Mix GDL with tapioca starch and water; pour into mould.
- Pour hot soy drink over the GDL & water mixture.
- Stir once in one direction, then cover with kitchen towel and lid.
- Set aside for 20 minutes until pudding is set.
- To make the syrup, combine all ingredients and bring to a simmer until all the palm sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Cooled syrup can be transferred into a jar and refrigerated for long term storage.
- Scoop some soy pudding into a serving bowl, add desired amount of syrup and serve.
If you’d like to get your hands on ALL the recipes featured in the above video and in the other Malaysian Ingredients Made Easy series, just sign up to my mailing list at MalaysianChefs.com/Recipes
