This cake. OH THIS CAKE! I have had some good ideas in my life and this is one of them! WOW! We eat a lot of mexican food in this house and Tres Leches Cake is one of my favorite things IF it is cooked correctly. I have had it when it was very runny (yuck) and also a bit too dry (double yuck!). I never thought to make this myself because I imagined it being a lot of work and easy to mess up. After attempting to order it last week during lunch and being told that they were sold out (at noon!), I decided the time had come to give it a go. I had seen Pioneer Woman post her recipe recently and decided to try that one. It should be noted that you will hear a LOT about Pioneer Woman on this blog...I am in love with her. LOVE. I LOVE HER. I make a lot of her food and a lot of food that I find on her other website, Tasty Kitchen. Her name is Ree and I will refer to her frequently by name as if we are best friends. Because we are. She doesn't know that, but still. Anyway, back to the cake. You will find the recipe here.I followed this recipe exactly, taking extra special care to gently stir and gently fold. I usually have trouble with anything that requires a light hand, so I was VERY careful. This is not a quick cake to make but it was worth every bit of the time. It is really important to follow her instructions about lightly folding in the egg whites...one edge of my cake was slightly lower than the middle, so I could see that the key to "fluffy" was the light hand. I had almost stirred mine too much. I also let it stand for the entire 30 minutes after I poured the milk mixture over the cake and this was key. It soaked up every single bit of the liquid and the cake turned into pure heaven without ANY liquid running out. It literally turned out PERFECT and was the best tres leches cake that I have ever had. Also, go the extra mile and make your own whipped cream...do NOT use Cool Whip!! It is SO easy with your mixer and the fresh hand whipped cream was TO DIE FOR and was the perfect topper. In my opinion, if you work so hard on a homemade cake, you should whip your own cream! Go all the way! :-)
We loved this cake from the first moment we served it, but it actually got even better after sitting in the fridge overnight. It was the perfect cold cake and the flavors got even deeper. It was so good that this will for sure be my go-to special occasion cake for all birthdays and events. And random Tuesdays. Or now. Bottom line? MAKE THIS CAKE!!
That looks TO DIE FOR. I LOOOOOOVE tres leches cake and if is ever on a menu, that is what I am getting, no matter what the other choices are. I am now racking my brain for some sort of occasion that might justify my baking this cake...something other than..."I'm hungry and I want to eat cake".
ReplyDeleteOne question...I don't have a good rectangular platter with a rim on it for inverting the cake...think it would still work to just leave the cake in the baking dish? On one hand, I am thinking that the texture of the bottom of the cake might be more prone to soaking up liquid than the top of the cake...although, if the sides pull away from the pan when baking, some of the liquid would probably be able to drip down the separated sides and then soak through the bottom from underneath the cake.
I am with you 100% on the homemade whipped cream...there is just no substitute!
I was in the same boat...I baked it in the long glass 9x13 dish, but had nothing to really turn it onto for the rest of the process. I ended up turning it onto a big cookie sheet and letting it cool completely. The I was able to just pick it up with my hands and put it back into the original dish (by now cooled), but flipped upsidedown like the recipe calls for. It was easy to do and then I poked LOTS of holes with a fork all over and poured the liquid. After letting it stand for 30 minutes, all the liquid was soaked into the cake. By the cake being inverted back into the pan, there was plenty of room on the sides for the liquid to get all around the cake. OH, and I was serious about those holes....I stuck that fork over every bit of the cake. I think where people probably go wrong is not puncturing the cake enough, otherwise it can't soak up everything. :-)
ReplyDelete