Torta del las Tres Leches

Heavenly Cake Baker Submission #2

Even though I live in Arizona, I’ve only had Tres Leches Cake a couple of times, and this is the first time I’ve prepared one. I know that my sister likes it; we had it on her birthday last year. So I thought I’d make this cake for my sister to share with her colleagues in the Research & Pulmonary Department at the VA Hospital.

The first step was to warm eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt over boiling water “until quite warm to the touch.” That didn’t take much time at all.

Then the egg mixture is beaten until thick and light in color, about 5 minutes.

During this time the cake flour is sifted, and then folded into the fluffy egg mixture.

Once the cake was in the oven, I began reducing the skim and whole milk. This took FOREVER! At the end of forever, sweetened condensed milk and heavy cream are added, quatro leches.

My 3″ deep round cake pan was only 8 inches rather than 9, so I did all kinds of mathematical calculations involving the volume of a cylinder and concluded that the extra batter would make 2 cupcakes. You can see that my calculations were off by just a bit. You can also see that rather than having a slight dome shape, my cake sunk a bit in the middle, but the indentation is an attractive almost abstract daisy shape. This is the first cake that I’ve baked in my new oven; it’s a good thing that I’m not a superstitious woman.

I soaked the cake overnight in the leches and then topped it off with whipped cream. Because I dropped this off at my sister’s home in the evening to be taken to work the next day, I stabilized the whipped cream with gelatin. The cupcakes received a similar treatment (without the topping), so I did get to taste the cake. For a tres leches, I thought it was very good. The leche mixture had a great taste, and the cake texture held up well with the soaking. If someone asked me to fix them a tres leches cake, I would happily use this recipe again, but it’s probably not something that I would fix for my own eating pleasure. Unlike other HCB bloggers, I wasn’t put off by the wet cake (maybe because I love to dunk cookies), I’m just a fan of dense, chocolaty cakes.

Unlike my other blog posts, as part of the Heavenly Cake Bakers, I don’t post recipes from this book on the internet. One of the reasons for this baking group is to encourage readers to purchase the cookbook. That strategy worked on me! After follow the group’s baking adventures for a couple of months, I ordered a copy from Amazon. You can too.

Lois Britton

An accountant by trade and a food blogger since 2009, Lois Britton fell in love with Polish cuisine during the years she lived in Poznań, Poland. As the creator of PolishHousewife.com, she loves connecting readers with traditional Polish recipes. Lois has a graduate certificate in Food Writing and Photography from the University of South Florida. She is the author of The Polish Housewife Cookbook, available on Amazon and on her website.

Comments

faithy, the baker

January 19, 2010 at 9:42 am

Wow..i love your new oven! Looks huge! Can put in a round pan and cupcakes at the side. I think your sponge cake rose beautifully. 🙂 I love fat dense chocolaty cakes but i don’t like wet sweet cakes..:)

Vicki

January 19, 2010 at 7:59 pm

Your cake looks great and the pictures as well.
I’m with you on dunked cookies, especially biscotti which is what this texture reminded me of.

Marie

January 20, 2010 at 1:40 am

I was surprised to read that people objected to the milky texture and taste of this cake–I thought everyone loved tres leches cake! Yours looks so pretty–how did you do the topping?

Hanaâ

January 20, 2010 at 4:33 am

Your cake looks lovely. Love the decoration on top. I added some gelatin to my caramel whipped cream frosting too because there’s no way the two of us can eat a whole cake :o)

Lois B

January 20, 2010 at 5:20 am

Faithy – thank you, I’m enjoying the newness of it; keeping it ever so clean. I wonder how long before the new wears off?

Vicki – you are so right about biscotti. I want to find the time to blog about the cranberry-pistachio biscotti recipe from my sister-in-law.

Marie & Hanaâ – thank you both! I started off trying to make a shell pattern, but I remember my Wilton I instructor saying you had to practice often to keep up your piping skills. She was right – LOL! I guess you can’t go wrong with a lot of fluffy cream!

Hanaâ

January 20, 2010 at 7:28 pm

2 things I forgot to mention earlier:
– My fav biscotti is Cranberry/Almond biscotti. Yum!
– You got a new oven. Nice! So did I last month. Which one did you get?

Lois B

January 21, 2010 at 12:55 am

Hanaâ, I found a 2 year old Whirlpool electric range on Craigslist – with the glass stovetop. It’s quite a change from our 23 year old model that only had 2 burners working. What’s yours like?

Nicola

January 21, 2010 at 5:29 pm

Your cake looks amazing. And I am with Faithy in the oven envy camp!

So clean you can take photos through the front glass – amazing.

Hanaâ

January 21, 2010 at 11:19 pm

Looks like you got a deal. A 2 year old oven is practically brand new. Mine is a Kenmore Elite electric range with 4 burners and a warmer (which can be used for bread proofing), and it has a dual convection oven (this means it has 2 fans, not 2 oven) :o) I’m loving convection baking so far!

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