When I was first flipping through the Moosewood cookbook, I saw several recipes for baked tofu. I had never thought of baking tofu. One that stood out the most was a Mole Baked Tofu. I looked at their recipe and it seemed very authentic. We went to the store with high hopes of finding all the different peppers and dried chilies we would need, but of course to no luck. I quickly used my iPhone to look up a different Mole recipe that was made up of all basic ingredients and decided it would have to do. One major difference was that the mole sauce recipe I found online had chocolate in it while the one in Moosewood did not.
When I got home from work I drained the tofu and pressed it while I made the mole sauce. Making the sauce was not nearly as intimidating as expected. Add one cup of diced onion and 3 tablespoons of minced garlic to a large sauce pot with 3 TBSP olive oil, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp cumin, and 1/4 tsp of cinnamon. Cook for about 10 minutes, until the onion is tender. Then add in 3 TBSP flour and 2.5 TBSP chili powder. Slowly whisk in stock (we used veggie instead of chicken) and increase the heat to medium-high. Let the sauce boil and simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until it reduces. Remove from the heat and whisk in 2oz of chocolate.
Once the sauce was ready, I sliced each block of tofu into 12 triangles, and put them into a baking dish. I then poured the mole sauce over top of the tofu and put into a 375° oven for an hour. I occasionally pulled out the dish and gave the mole sauce a little stir. After an hour we served the baked tofu with a side of Mexican rice and homemade guacamole.
The mole sauce was SUPER chocolaty and sweet. I do not think I would use the Special Dark next time because it added sweetness that you don't normally find in a mole sauce. It was also missing spice. I definitely want to try a different recipe for mole and see if we can get a more authentic taste. I also want to try baking the tofu again, maybe marinate the tofu for a bit first to absorb flavor before baking. Not a terrible first attempt at mole though!
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