Mexican chocolate tofu pudding with homemade churros

I’ve been dreaming about Mexican chocolate tofu pudding since Crayton forwarded me the New York Times recipe a few weeks ago. It was my turn on our recipe exchange, so I ditched my Mexican chocolate ice cream idea and told everyone I was making dairy-free pudding. A few people were like, “Wait…. what?” None of us are vegan.

Last night, we feasted before the pudding-making even started. Alice whipped up a batch of pot stickers. Julie brought sweet bread from a Japanese bakery. Tricia brought mini-weenies in barbecue sauce, Joy H. brought spicy guac, and Jesica and Joy V. brought wine. (Which later resulted in extremely blurry churro pictures.)

Jesica graciously offered to let us use two chocolate bars she’d bought in Tabasco. She crushed them on my molcajete….

… and then we melted them in the microwave. They smelled like fresh-baked brownies.

Everything went into the blender, with a box-and-a-half of tofu and some spices.

The result was luscious. It was a creamy, thick, perfect pudding, that required all of five minutes on the stove.

This means a lot to me, because a few months ago I experienced the great Chocolate Pudding Disaster of 2009. I spent hours melting chocolate and worrying about the scalding the milk, only to end up with chocolate soup. I almost swore off chocolate pudding forever after that. But tofu, that wonderful, square-headed, plain block of soy, has saved me.

The churros weren’t as easy. I used a recipe from my 1944 copy of Elena’s Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes, which called for a simple flour-and-water dough. Unfortunately, the tip on my cheap pastry bag came off as we were piping the dough into the oil. (Eeee!) We rigged up a Ziploc bag with duct tape, which worked marvelously. But piping dough got old after awhile. I was hot and sweaty. My house has no air conditioning.

Next time I might just buy churros from the dude on the corner.

The combination, when it was all done, was to die for, so it’s really worth having them both together.

Recipes and cooking notes after the jump.

Mexican Chocolate Tofu Pudding
Adapted from Mark Bittman’s recipe in The New York Times

On using Mexican chocolate: When I say “Mexican chocolate”, I’m referring to the crumbly, sugary discs sold in Mexican supermarkets — Abuelita or Ibarra are popular brands. It doesn’t melt like regular bittersweet chocolate, so we added a few tablespoons of water to give it a smoother consistency. It kind of resembled brownie dough as we were loading it into the blender. Also, if you like super smooth pudding, you may want to strain it before pouring it into your serving bowl. I liked the texture just fine.

On the churro dough: Lots of recipes out there call for egg, but I recall reading somewhere that the truly “authentic” churros don’t have egg in them. Because I’m a snob, and I love old cookbooks, we went with this recipe. But Dinner With Julie’s recipe looks awesome too. I used a 1/2-inch star tip, but next time I may go smaller. These suckers were large.

Does the type of tofu matter? Bittman says the creamiest texture can only come from silken tofu. We found silken the brand, but the label said extra firm. Still worked great.

Pudding

1/4 cup sugar
1 pound silken tofu
8 ounces Mexican chocolate
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon chili powder, or more to taste

1. Crumble chocolate into small pieces, or mash with a molcajete, if you’ve got one. Place in microwave-proof bowl and heat two minutes at a time on medium-power. Stir, and add a tablespoon or two of water if the mixture looks dry.

2. In a small pot, combine sugar with 3/4 cup water; bring to a boil and cook until sugar is dissolved, stirring occasionally. Cool slightly.

3. Put all ingredients in a blender and purée until completely smooth, stopping machine to scrape down its sides if necessary. Divide among 4 to 6 ramekins (or cute parfait glasses) and chill for at least 30 minutes. Serve with piping hot churros rolled in sugar.

Churros

1 cup sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1 slice bread
1/2 lemon
granulated sugar

Sift measured flour three times. (Note: We sifted three times for our first batch, and then said screw it, we’re hot, and only sifted it once the next time. No taste difference that I could tell… or maybe I was just sweaty and tired.) Add salt to water, heat to the boiling point and immediately pour it into the flour all at once, beating mixture until it is fluffy. Pour batter into a pastry tube before it gets cold and drop small amounts about two inches long into very hot, deep oil, in which you have heated a slice of bread and the half-lemon until the bread is very dark brown — almost burned — and removed them. When crullers are gold brown, remove them to absorbent paper and before they are cold, roll in sugar. The burned bread and lemon add a distinctive flavor. Makes 1 dozen crullers.