Making Lao Ban Soybean Curd!

by Norman Leibovitz

So, exams had just officially ended for us, and we’ve found a awesome blog which taught us how to make our Lao Ban and we’ve decided to follow it, and make our first Lao Ban!

So me and Wess decided to try making Lao Ban based on the ingredient and instruction provided by Dejiki!

Yes, Lao Ban

According to the blog, we’re able to make majority(almost all) of the purchases at NTUC.

True enough, when we’re there, we got most of the ingredient there except for one.

Paying all the ingredient

And this one ingredient is headache for us as it requires us to run to this one place to buy, and that is Phoon Huat. It requires this one ingredient called the RED MAN instant jelly powder which is of course the main ingredient.

Right after buying everything from NTUC, we went to the nearest Phoon Huat, which luckily isn’t very far away from where we were, just within 5mins walk

JUST to look for this jelly which comes in 200g($4.90) and 1kg($18+) and just nice, the 200g powder is out of stock, leaving only the 1kg -.- and the best part is, we only need 13g of it. YAY

Obviously, we refuse to buy the 1kg bottle as after this one time making of it, we won’t be using it ANYMORE. LOL

Our only next sound move is to go back to NTUC to hunt for some other instant jelly powder to substitute it.

We found all kind of powder except instant jelly powder-.-

So we’re left with no choice but to take some other powder other then jelly powder. LOL!

After that we just took a cab back to Wess’ house to make it as finding for the powder has taken up most of our time ;(

Secret Ingredient

Cabbing to Wess’ house

Yay! And after like 5mins we’ve reached his place, it’s damn fast..it’s damn near..

So below are the ingredient for the Lao Ban that we’ve purchased

Ingredient

e-instruction

The instructions

Kitchen Item!

And of course the utensil and kitchen stuff to make it.

Keeping a record

And oh oh oh.. keeping a record of what we’ve done is very important too!

At first, it looks and feel freakin complicated making it. But after we tried it, it’s actually very simple, just adding all the ingredient together and stir them-.-

Cut and prepare all the ingredient

What you can do is to measure all the ingredient and prepare them by the side of the pot as it’s going to be very fast when it start, no time for you to think and measure.

Stir until hot, not boil

No white sugar, so we use brown sugar -.-

‘Agaration’ as we’ve no weighting scale-.-

This is true, baking or cooking is all about agaration! LOL!

I’ve never once used a weighting scale ever since i started baking. Haha

Bought the wrong Jelly Powder + took the wrong colour-.-

This is the most epic part! HAHA

The jelly powder that we’ve bought is

firstly, the wrong one

secondly, it has a colour dye to it that we did not know, until we poured it in -.-

But we though it actually quite good looking and it’s shows our creativity(hahahaha)

Sieve out the “bubble”

So as i’ve mention above about how easy it is to make this, it’s actually done.

what’s left is actually just to sieve the ‘bubble’ out and we’re all set.

Ready to be freeze and served

Although wrong colour, it looks good anyway

Cap it up and off it goes into the fridge!

So, we’re all set and done. See, easy pisy japadaisy

All we’ve to do now, is to wait for it to ‘harden’ in the fridge

Meanwhile while waiting, we just try to process the time lapse video of the making! haha!

It’s fun!

And after about 1-2hour, the bean curd freeze up and of course, that means it’s ready to be served! YAY!

Harden

Quite nice looking! LOL!

About to eat and taste

When we first open up the cap and took a long deep whiff.

We looked at each other and gave a very satisfying look, as the smell is really there as in, “whoa this is Lao Ban 1:1” HAHA

but let me tell you guys a secret.

THIS IS A FREAKING FAILURE! LOLOL!

We followed by tasting the “bean curd”

Firstly, it was as hard as a rock

Second, it was super dry

Thirdly, tasteless(due to the hardness)

Ok, the worst “Lao Ban” we’ve tasted

So, we can conclude that the main problem here is that we’ve used the wrong jelly powder and we can totally imagine if the correct jelly powder is used, it will be

YES! THE REAL LAO BAN!

a little part of me just died

It’s damn disappointing, but we seriously had fun making it!

I will be trying it again, with those extra ingredient and update you guys again!

Till then

Norman