Tres Leches Cake
Growing up, we always had a can of condensed milk in our pantry. It was the secret ingredient in many of my mother’s Indian dessert recipes including milk burfi and gulab jamun. I would eagerly open the tins for her, hoping to sneak in a spoonful or two of that luscious sweet cream for myself. Condensed milk is also the star ingredient in Mexican Tres Leches along with two other kinds of milk: evaporated milk and cream. A light vanilla sponge cake is soaked with this trio of milks and then topped with a generous layer of whipped cream. It’s one of my all-time favorite desserts and if I see it on a dessert menu, it beckons me to order it. The taste of silky vanilla cake drenched in creamy sweet milk brings back fond memories of my childhood and cooking with my mother.
I tried making tres leches many years ago using an Alton Brown recipe and it was a complete disaster. The upper part of the cake remained crumbly and dry (like cornbread). It never absorbed the sticky sweet liquid that had pooled at the bottom of the baking dish, I was so disappointed. I asked a Mexican baker friend for some tips on what had gone wrong and she suggested a vanilla sponge cake recipe that required the egg whites to be whipped separately from the yolks. The egg whites create a lighter sponge cake with more holes to absorb the liquid. The Alton Brown recipe uses whole eggs. The other trick is to let the cake cool slightly before adding the milk soak but the most critical step is patience. The cake needs to marinate for at least 24 hours to fully absorb all all the sweet liquid therefore, for best results, plan ahead.
Once again I turned to Smitten Kitchen and she didn’t do me wrong. Her recipe is exactly the method recommended to me by my baker friend. I did skip the part where she says to reserve some of the the milk liquid to serve with the finished cake. I just poured the whole thing. I also used half and half instead of heavy cream because the thought of all that extra fat made my arteries throb. Next time, I will take her suggestion to swap out one of the milks for egg nog or coconut milk, sounds divine!
If you’re not in the mood to bake but craving Tres Leches, I highly suggested visiting your local panadería or Mexican bakery.
Enjoy!
