When presented with the idea of making tofu from scratch, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little intimidated. It seems like it would be a very intense process, but I’ll try anything once so I dove in head first with my fingers crossed.

When my Make-Your-Own Tofu Kit from Morinaga arrived in the mail, I couldn’t wait to try it out. On their website, you can order all different types of kits ranging from silken to extra firm. The package they sent me was for silken, which I was excited about because I’ve only ever used to extra-firm variety for things like stir-fry dishes and mock meat recipes.

Having opened the box right away, I quickly discovered that only two ingredients were necessary; soy milk and nigari (a coagulant). All you have to do is mix the two together, pour the solution into a few ramekins, quickly sit them in a pot or a deep pan, fill it with water, cover it and allow the ramekins to simmer for fifteen plus minutes. When pouring the water in the pot, it is important not to splash the water into the tofu liquid because it will affect the way it solidifies. I let my tofu simmer for about twenty minutes just because it didn’t look completely done after fifteen. Voila! It really turned out to be tofu! Now, what to do with it?

I have to admit that I’d been racking my brain for a few days as my silken tofu sat covered in refrigerator for a recipe worthy of something I’d worked (not) so hard on. I’d remembered friends telling me that it was an awesome vegan protein replacer in smoothies, but that sounded boring to me. Then I got a guilty idea in my head: chocolate pudding. Actually, chocolate peanut butter pudding because why the heck not? I’ve experimented with vegan pudding before and the results were less than satisfactory. I was thrilled when I discovered avocado chocolate pudding because who doesn’t love chocolate and avocados? Let me be frank, it was disgusting. I’d go as far as to say it was repulsive, so needless to say, my silken tofu dreams scared me a bit. Here’s what I threw in a blender:

12 oz silken Morinaga DIY tofu
⅓ C peanut butter
¼ C dairy free chocolate syrup

Here I am, like a mad scientist, wild eyed and heavily breathing over my blender (I’m sick, not insane), but then I calmed down and realized that nothing can be bad when you mix it with chocolate and peanut butter. The texture was silky smooth and perfect, and the taste was even better. Now this recipe is stupid simple, but it tastes great and is really quick and easy to whip up as a dessert for an upcoming holiday party. Especially if there’s going to be vegan or dairy-free folks there, and I bet if you told anyone else it was vegan, they’d never know. To finish, I poured the pudding back into the ramekins, sprinkled some crushed peanuts over top and let them set in the fridge for 45 minutes. My next experiment is going to be making this into a chocolate peanut butter pie.