Tofu Mocha Brownies

Hi again, Foodiestudent readers! This is another guest post by Foodiestudent’s sister. (You can catch up on my past posts here and here.)

Foodie asked me to make a tofu recipe for this post. I said yes but I didn’t want to make a stir-fry or other dinner recipe. Unlike Foodie, I have a microscopic kitchen that is not conducive to cooking complex recipes (and by “complex” I mean “anything requiring counter space for things like chopping vegetables”). But I’m a trooper so I Googled some tofu recipes and found tofu-recipes.com and a super-easy recipe for Tofu Fudge Mocha Bars. I’m game for any recipe with fudge in the title! :)

For the taste test, I made two other mocha brownie recipes. Brownie “A” was simply a box of Betty Crocker brownie mix, made with 1/3 cup of decaf instant coffee crystals added.


Brownie “B” was Baker’s One Bowl Mocha Brownies from the Kraft website, made without nuts or icing.


And brownie “C” was the tofu recipe.


I was worried about one thing with the tofu recipe: the recipe calls for 12 oz of “silken” tofu. I couldn’t find anything called “silken” tofu, so I used “soft” tofu instead, hoping it would be ok. The first step in the recipe calls for you to beat the tofu with an electric mixer, so it would get smooth anyway. The brownies should be fine.

At least, that was the theory. Here’s what the tofu brownies looked like after being prepared and baked:


I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what that looks like. I couldn’t serve that monstrosity to anyone else, but I tasted it for myself and… let’s see if I can spell this correctly… BLEAAAGHHH! It was BITTER. The recipe calls for lots of cocoa and coffee, but not a lot of sugar. And raw sugar isn’t nearly as sweet as white sugar, so double whammy of bitterness. Yuck, yuck, yuck! YUCK!

So much for the great tofu experiment. Sorry folks.

But… I still had two other mocha brownies for the taste test! I labeled them using a bottle of prepared white icing (unfortunately I bought “drizzle” icing instead of “decorating” icing, so the letters were a bit drippy – but yummy!). Witness:


I had 11 people rate the two non-repulsive mocha brownies: 9 of my coworkers plus my husband and me. The results:

Brownie A (Betty Crocker mix with coffee added):
• Average score: 4.1
• “Fairly sweet, good texture, stronger coffee taste”
• “Strong coffee flavour, nice texture, quite sweet”
• “OK, needs more chocolate”

Brownie B (Kraft recipe with no nuts or icing)
• Average score: 4.5
• “Texture was more cakelike and the coffee was more subtle”
• “Can’t taste the coffee, yeah! Not quite as sweet”
• “Moist, delicious, perfect combination of crunch and chew”

Overall, most people liked both brownies, and their preference was mainly dependent on whether they liked the coffee taste, which was definitely stronger in Brownie A. My personal preference was Brownie A for its taste and chewiness. It was also the easier recipe to make, although it made a smaller batch.

For anyone who likes brownies and wants to try something a little bolder than typical brownie recipes, I would recommend either of these two recipes.

And leave the tofu for stir-fries and smoothies.