This Sweet and Sour Tofu With Corn is a wonderful Asian-inspired tofu recipe.  Preparation is pretty fast, too—perfect for a lazy end-of-summer meal. It’s beautiful, too. 

Curious about tofu? Tofu was first produced in China more than 2000 years ago, probably as a happy accident when someone curdled soy milk while adding nigari seaweed, a coagulating agent. 

The tofu we buy in stores today has a lot of healthy features. It is protein rich and the protein is a complete protein. That means that tofu contains all nine essential amino acids. Too, tofu is rich in iron, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus. It is also a low calorie food that contains no cholesterol. 

But, which to buy–soft or hard tofu? It depends upon what you are cooking. Soft tofu contains more water and has a soft, custardy texture, making it better for soups and desserts. Hard (or extra hard) tofu is pressed to remove more of the water in its base. Hard tofu is better for stir-fry and grilling recipes where you want the tofu to hold its shape while cooking. 

This recipe is from Melissa Clark’s cookbook Dinner: Changing The Game. The book is available through your local bookstore or on Amazon here.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.

If you read this blog, you’ve met our CQO-OT (Chief Quality Officer and Official Taster), Juliet, many times before. Juliet is a 7-pound rescue Yorkie who brightens everything about our world here at Blue Cayenne.

Last week, King Arthur Baking’s Facebook page featured a post that asked readers to post photographs of their beloved pets and then proceeded to match the photo of the pet with a KAB recipe. Couldn’t resist that one, so up it went–a glamour shot of Sweet Juliet.

As it turned out, one of the first replies I got to the post was from one of those Internet creeps who asks you to reply to them privately on Messenger. Didn’t happen, of course, (Blue Cayenne’s editor wasn’t born yesterday, after all)  and, bless them, KAB promptly removed the post. Geesh! The weirdos are everywhere—even on a recipe site.

But back to the post-your-beloved-pet photo KAB promotion…

The people at King Arthur Baking matched Juliet  with King Arthur Baking’s Honey Cake–a really good match for her, I thought, because (of course) I think the sun rises and sets with this little honey of a dog and the cake is a beauty, too.

Here is the King Arthur Baking recipe link: King Arthur Baking Honey Cake.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.

This  Zoe Francois plum cake is absolutely wonderful. In the introduction to the recipe, she writes that this plum cake is her favorite cake in her cookbook, Zoe Bakes Cakes. (There are some outstanding cakes in that cookbook, by the way! So, that’s high praise for this cake.)

Don’t get me wrong. Marion Burros’ famous plum cake is still the GOAT. (You can find that recipe here.)

Burros’ legendary cake was featured here back in 2015. Burros, a food columnist for the NY Times, originally published her recipe in the food section of that paper in 1982. The recipe was so well-received by Times readers that its publication became a food section tradition every plum season for many years. People still talk about Burros’ plum cake in reverential terms.

Here is a photo of the beautiful Burros cake we baked  back  in  2015  (and  many  many  times  since).

Francois’ recipe, however, rivals the Burros’ cake in my opinion. The crumb of her cake is tender and oh-so-flavorful with its mixture of all-purpose white flour, wheat flour and almond flour. Burros’ plum cake doesn’t incorporate a mixture of flours and I think those inclusions distinguish Francois’ cake from Burros’. Don’t get me wrong. One cake is not better than the other; they are just wonderfully different. 

 There is, of course, that old saying about not messing with perfection (the Burros’ plum cake, in this case). So, what I suggest is that you stay open to the fact that there can be two really really wonderful plum cakes. Heck, why not do a baking test to check this out. Make both cakes! Invite your friends and family. Do a taste-off. It will be a win-win and both cakes will disappear as you and your guests taste-compare over and over and over…just to be sure, of course. 

You can find this recipe in Francois’ cookbook Zoe Bakes Cakes. You can find the book through your local bookstore or at Amazon here.

Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.