recipes: chocolate & tofu brownies

I’ve made tofu chiffon cake before, but this was my first time making tofu brownies. I like how certain recipes (particularly Japanese) have tofu as their base ingredient. It provides another dimension to the cake, and adds some natural moisture (if you don’t drain the water from the tofu).

This creation was somehow accidental – I was meant to make a fluffy chocolate & tofu pound cake but ended up with brownies as I forgot to add the baking powder! It turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I really liked its texture. But if you are a pound cake lover, feel free to follow the recipe as per normal!

Ingredients: (makes one 18.5 x 9 cm pound cake pan – you may wish to double the recipe for a standard brownie pan)

Silken tofu  100g
Cake flour 90g
1 tsp baking powder (omit to make brownies)
Cocoa powder 10g
Sugar 70g
Egg 1
Melted butter 20g
Vanilla essence 1/2 tsp

Steps: 

1. Preheat oven to 170 degree celsius and line the pan with parchment paper (or grease it lightly)
2. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and sift them.
3. Beat the egg and add the sugar in two additions
4. Add the tofu into the egg and sugar mixture (there is no need to drain the tofu), and mix well until it is smooth without lumps (you may wish to blend the tofu beforehand, but I skipped that step) — it is very important that the batter is smooth without lumps, some small bits of tofu is fine. Otherwise, the texture and taste will be affected.
5. Add melted butter (microwave on high for 60 seconds to melt) and vanilla essence to step 4 and mix.
6. Lastly, fold in dry ingredients
7. Pour into the prepared pan (knock pan gently on the counter to remove air pockets)
8. Bake for 30 – 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool it on the rack.

Happy baking!