Taiwanese Desserts

Pin It This is a teeny tiny sample of the desserts that are available in Taiwan. New desserts are cropping up everyday. Of course, old favorites are constantly being reinvented.


This, for example, is an old favorite. It's silken tofu with yam and taro tapioca pearls in a sweet brown sugar broth. The light and tender silken tofu is a perfect contrast to the chewy and tense tapioca pearls.


This is also silken tofu, but with lotus seeds, white cloud ear fungi, Chinese pearl barley (Job's tear) in clear sugar broth.


This is grass jelly with konjac, sweetened Fava beans (?), and tapioca pearls. The new twist on this classic dessert is the addition of cream, which is drizzled over the top. The cream softens the herbal, almost medicinal, flavor of grass jelly and makes it taste more like dessert. The Fava beans are sweet and creamy -- a perfect contrast to the crunchy and light konjac.


This is a cream puff filled with mango sauce and whipped cream.


Doughnuts are all the rage in Taiwan. But doughnuts in Taiwan are not the sugar bombs that we have in the States. They are crunchy on the outside but chewy on the inside, almost like mochi. There's an intense burned sugar aroma, but it's not sweet at all. The only thing this doughnut has in common with the doughnuts that we know is the shape.


Speaking of mochi, this is a kind of mochi that's very different from the ones that I posted about earlier. This is not filled with anything and covered with crushed peanuts and black sesame seeds. This special mochi is toasted so that it's melt-y and gooey on the inside.


Believe it or not, these are also mochi. They are baked and puffed up. The outer layer is crunchy like meringue, but inside is chewy like mochi. Yes, they are as odd as they look.