Soups are a popular choice for dessert in many countries, particularly the further east you travel. Whether it’s an Asian red bean concoction, or one of the many fruit soup recipes from around the world, sweet soups are something different and tasty to add to your cooking repertoire.
Some of these suggestions, particularly the fruit-based recipes, can also be eaten as a refreshing starter or as a tasty snack between meals.
The sweet Asian option
Lots of the more common ingredients used in the sweet Asian soups can be bought in good Asian or Chinese food stores around Ireland.
From China
In Cantonese kitchens, tong sui, which literally means ‘sugar water’, are sweet soups of all varieties.
In some places you’ll find street stalls selling a full menu of dessert soup medleys.
Red bean soup is the king of desserts in China. Made with red adzuki beans, it can be served hot or cold, depending on the time of year.
Sweet black sesame soup, or sesame tong shui, is rumoured to help prevent grey hair. Made with rice, water and toasted black sesame seeds, it’s at its best garnished with chopped nuts or sprinkled coconut.
Rose tea dessert soup is prepared with steeped rose tea, which is added to dried lotus seeds and goji berries. Throw in a little dried snow fungus (a type of jelly fungus widely used in Asian cuisine, and renowned for its immunity-boosting properties) and this recipe will be a great talking point when you’re stuck for conversation!
If you’re looking for something really rare and exotic, for a special occasion, swallow’s nest soup is a delicacy in China. The nests are soaked and boiled, and added to rock sugar. It’s considered by some to be an aphrodisiac, so choose this for your menu if romance is on the cards. The nests are made from the hardened saliva of the swiftlet swallow – it may not be a dish for the faint of heart.
Many of these soups are prepared with Chinese rock sugar, or bing tang, instead of the usual granulated variety we use in western style cooking. Bing tang is a crystallized, refined sugar, which comes in large crystals, and is not as sweet as the regular kind.
Hong Kong
Sweet potatoe and ginger soup is a favourite in Hong Kong, and has quite a kick to it.
Japan
Oshiruko is similar to the Chinese red bean soup, but is served with mochi, a type of Japanese rice cake.
Vietnam
Che is a sweet soup that comes in many guises. Sweet banana soup with tapioca and coconut is common in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, served hot in winter and cold in the steamy summers.
Thailand
Not unlike the Vietnamese recipe, a traditional sweet dessert soup is made from tapioca mixed with fruit and coconut milk.
Taiwan
The sweet peanut soup is a melt in the mouth dessert prepared with whole blanched peanuts and pandan leaves.
Fruit soup favourites.
Chilled blueberry soup. Made with a cup of fruity white wine (or white grape juice), fresh or frozen blueberries, sugar, orange juice and plain yoghurt. This one will impress your guests at lunch.
Tropical fruit medley. Just about any mix will work here, but pineapple, mangoe, kiwi and grapes go particularly well together. Grape juice is often used as a base, and it’s garnished with a sweet herb such as mint.
Fruktsuppe. A Norwegian fruit soup, this is prepared with dried fruits like prunes and raisins, and mixed with grape juice and sago or tapioca.
Watergruwel. From the Netherlands, don’t be cowed by the slightly off-putting name of this dish – it’s a lot tastier than it sounds. Often eaten for breakfast, the traditional Dutch recipe uses pearl barley, raisins, currants, and red or blackberry juice sweetened with sugar and cinnamon.
Canteloupe melon soup. Removing the flesh from this sweet melon variety, which is available in most Irish stores, it’s blended with lemon juice, sugar and a small amount of port wine, and attractively served inside the gourd.
Just plain decadent.
Chocolate soup. Save it for a rainy day, when nothing but chocolate will do. This is the ultimate in indulgence - prepared the world over. Made with milk and cream and scented with cinnamon, it has got cocoa powder, sugar, and vanilla. We’ll leave it up to you to choose what you dunk in this luxurious concoction!