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Many Chinese restaurants (esp. buffets) have a blancmange-like dessert that's essentially soft cubes of white almond-flavored gelatin. This is often referred to as "almond tofu", mostly for its appearance; all of the recipes/instamixes I've ever seen for it have simply been plain sweetened gelatine made up with a white opaque liquid (regular milk, nondairy creamer, or occasionally coconut milk) and a bit of almond extract.
However, yesterday I discovered a nifty variation that really is semi-instant almond tofu. The listed ingredients are soybean solids, sugar, almond, and glucono delta lactone (a coagulant); you pour a packet of the stuff into a cup, add hot water while stirring vigorously ("clockwise", the instructions specify; I have not yet dared widdershins), and then wait a few minutes for it to solidify as it cools down. Depending on one's tolerance for certain food textures, more or less solidification might be required; after the recommended interval of about 20 minutes, the result is imho pleasantly gooshy but might remind others of spoiled milk or snot. Presumably if chilled in the refrigerator, it would become considerably more solid, but none of my test batches have lasted that long so far.
Slight nitpicks: it's rather sweet, though probably not more so than most people would expect from desserty things, and I wish they had more info about the "almond" component. The allergy warning label does warn of nuts, which suggests that it's not just almond extract (whether natural or benzaldehyde); in fact, it has the distinctive hint-of-cyanide bitterness of, well, bitter almonds. It's yummy, and presumably there isn't quite enough cyanide to injure anyone who eats these on a regular basis, but I wish there was some sort of quantitative indication-- not that most food labels have that sort of exact percentage/mass breakdown anyway, even ones written more smoothly than "Adopting the modern scientific technology, this product is made under the strictly quality control, and it is the wholesome blend of soybean and almond."
However, yesterday I discovered a nifty variation that really is semi-instant almond tofu. The listed ingredients are soybean solids, sugar, almond, and glucono delta lactone (a coagulant); you pour a packet of the stuff into a cup, add hot water while stirring vigorously ("clockwise", the instructions specify; I have not yet dared widdershins), and then wait a few minutes for it to solidify as it cools down. Depending on one's tolerance for certain food textures, more or less solidification might be required; after the recommended interval of about 20 minutes, the result is imho pleasantly gooshy but might remind others of spoiled milk or snot. Presumably if chilled in the refrigerator, it would become considerably more solid, but none of my test batches have lasted that long so far.
Slight nitpicks: it's rather sweet, though probably not more so than most people would expect from desserty things, and I wish they had more info about the "almond" component. The allergy warning label does warn of nuts, which suggests that it's not just almond extract (whether natural or benzaldehyde); in fact, it has the distinctive hint-of-cyanide bitterness of, well, bitter almonds. It's yummy, and presumably there isn't quite enough cyanide to injure anyone who eats these on a regular basis, but I wish there was some sort of quantitative indication-- not that most food labels have that sort of exact percentage/mass breakdown anyway, even ones written more smoothly than "Adopting the modern scientific technology, this product is made under the strictly quality control, and it is the wholesome blend of soybean and almond."