Almond Tofu With Poached Apricots & Black Sesame

Ever since I was part of an online cooking session that my workplace ran last year, I’ve been a big fan of Lucas Sin. He hosted a cook-along and we made mapo tofu. So I was really excited to find an original dessert recipe of his, and wanted it to be the closer for our Mid-Autumn Festival dinner.

The recipe may seem a little daunting, because of the ingredients and multiple components. But watch the video, pay a visit to your nearest Asian grocery, and you’ll be fine.

To make the almond milk, you need regular old almonds plus apricot kernels, aka Southern Chinese almonds. I’ve known that these are the secret to homemade amaretti, and I’ve also heard that too many can make you sick. Anyway, the almond milk is just pureeing the soaked almonds and kernels to a smooth texture. I ended up with almost 3 cups of almond milk, so I made a double batch of the almond tofu (to feed eight people).

For the almond sauce, you need to look for osmanthus syrup. This is a jar of sweet, thick liquid infused with dried flowers. I’m not familiar with this ingredient but look forward to trying it in other desserts.

Next, to make the black sesame sauce, you puree the toasted seeds, with rice, and sweeten it with a bit of honey. It’s kinda like black sesame soup, but looser.

Finally, to make the poached apricots, I used some Viognier, my favourite white wine. It has the distinct fragrance of apricots in the nose when you sip it, but that subtlety is probably lost when it’s used to simmer dried fruit. But I thought I was being clever.

Assembling the dessert is the most fun part. You layer the two sauces together so that when you pour them out, they blend into these beautiful patterns, like marble art. I loved the mix of textures and flavours in this dessert, and that every component is made from scratch. Highly recommended.