Easy Swallow Nest Soup (Bird's Nest Dessert)

Close-up of a spoonful of steamed bird's nest sweet soup.

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5 from 37 votes

Easy Swallow Nest Soup (Bird's Nest Dessert)

The easiest Chinese bird's nest dessert you could ever make!

Prep Time3

Cook Time20

Total Time25

Course: Appetizer, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: Chinese, singaporean, Southeast Asian

Servings: person

Calories: 176kcal

Author: Zen

Equipment

Steamer or pasta pot

Ingredients

1 Small coconut Top sliced off. Avoid the bigger ones as they can be a bit too much for a dessert. Try to get pre-cut ones to make your life easier.
1 teaspoon Goji berries Soak in hot water.
1 jar Ready-to-drink bird's nest Do not confuse this with the dried bird's nest which would require
Sugar Optional. The coconut water is naturally sweet so I don't like to add sugar. If you have a very sweet tooth, rock sugar is the traditional type of sugar used for Chinese desserts but regular (caster/ granulated) sugar can do as well. Do check if your ready-to-drink bird's nest is sweetened before adding any sugar!

Instructions

Drain the goji berries.
Open the coconut and keep the coconut "hat" on the side. Remove some of the coconut water from the coconut (to make space for the goji berries and ready-to-drink bird's nest). I suggest removing at least 1C of the water first to avoid any spillage. Do not throw the coconut water away as it can be drunk or used to make soups!
Open the bird's nest jar and add all the contents into the coconut followed by the goji berries. If there is empty space in the coconut, add some of the removed coconut water back to the coconut.
Recover the coconut with its "hat" then steam. The ingredients are all ready-to-eat so steaming is merely to heat up the coconut water as well as to soften the coconut flesh. The steaming time thus depends on the size of your coconut, how hot you want your dessert to be and how soft you like your coconut flesh. I prefer mine my desserts either cold or hot (not in between!) and I like the texture of soft coconut flesh, so I usually steam mine for 20 minutes if the coconut is small and 30 minutes for a bigger coconut.

Notes

If you don't have a steamer, you can use a pasta pot with strainer to steam the coconut. (Add water to the pasta pot till it reaches just below the strainer, then place the coconut in the strainer, lower into the pot, cover and steam.)

However, you will only be able to steam 1 coconut at a time, which isn't very convenient for entertaining!

Note: the nutritional information is an estimate automatically calculated using the WPRM recipe maker as well as a NTUC listing (based on a 70g Eu Yan sang bottle of birds' nest.) I am not responsible for its veracity.

Nutrition