I went to a party yesterday at Friend #2’s home. The theme was Mexican. They served carnitas, also known as pork deep fried in lard. The suggestion of trefe cooked in a bubbling vat of trefe caused Friend #3 to bring the matzoh ball soup of her people as her Mexican dish.
I wanted to bring a Tres Leches cake. Tres Leches cake (not Dulce de Leche cake, count your leches, people) is a cake made with three kinds of milk. I found the recipe I wanted to use here, where I remembered it, buried deep in Catherine’s blog.
I wasn’t as inventive as Catherine, swapping out one leche for coconut milk, because I’d never had it before. I played it safe and took her reference link to the Alton Brown recipe and made the cake straight to the brief.
Here is my timeline.
- Make and bake basic cake. Looks as promised.
- Smell cake as it cools; wonder what it’s supposed to smell like.
- Poke finger at cooled cake, wonder what it’s supposed to feel like.
- Stab it with skewers.
- Combine the evaporated and condensed milks with the half-and-half (so, technically, Dos point Cinco Leches) and pour over cake to fill rectangular pan.
- The next morning, whip the cream topping and realize: if it’s topped no one will notice if a test edge is missing.
- Try the test slice without topping and say, “No, this is wrong. This is … juicy cake. Cake can’t be juicy. I can’t serve this to people.”
- Apply the topping to the test slice and then say, “I was wrong. This is the best cake I have ever had.”
Truly, the cream balanced out the sweetness and texture of the cake and countered the unpleasant sensation of biting into cake and having it squirt milk into your mouth. (Supress your smiles.)
I polled the party and no one had tried Tres Leches cake before, so they couldn’t confirm if it was “right,” but they seemed to like it just fine.