in vietnam, my aunt would come over and bring me these containers of jelly, mainly the green one which was pandan flavor, and it was the first time i had ever had anything like this. it’s served cold and sometimes is topped with coconut milk or other sweet liquids. the texture is jiggly and keeps its shape, but is creamy and melts in your mouth. i think i can compare it to flan if it was a lighter and less firm custard, maybe like japanese pudding. it’s super refreshing too. made from soybean milk. now that im back in the states, ive started missing it real bad and the issue was that aunt said these were special made to order so i anticipated that it wouldn’t be an easy recipe to find. fortunately, with some sleuthing skills and the tiktok search bar, i started with ‘rau cau’ which is jelly in viet, and scrolled to try to find what i was looking for. all the options were the normal type of viet jelly that’s firmer and has a slight crunch to it. that’s when we had to call mom and ask her, to which her reply was ‘rau cau mem’. i then searched that up and it was basically the same results. until, i saw the hashtag for tofu and decided to search that one up and it was game time. the tofu pudding i grew up with was best warm and served with a brown sugar ginger syrup that was soothing for the soul and immensely comforting. turns out that it’s cold sister is also a delicious and addicting vietnamese dessert. i’m so excited i learned how to make it AND it’s mad easy too.