Amado: Ok I, we have a project for tomorrow. I need you to make a Tres Leches Cake for Friday.
Me: Uhm, I never made one before.
Amado: I know! That's the fun part :) It's for my Manager's birthday.
I had a feeling he's already committed to the task even before he asked me so the only option for me was to say "yes". I knew it wasn't going to be a hard one to take on anyway.
Like the rest of my most recent recipes, I looked for one by Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman). Her recipes are really simple but really good. You can follow her recipe below. The cake in the first photo was made out of scrap pieces. Can't waste the good stuff!
I wasn't able to take a photo of the finished cake because I wanted to wait for Amado to figure out how he wanted to decorate it. You can check out his Instagram photos here and here for the finished product.
It took every ounce of energy to hold myself back from licking the remnants of condensed milk off of that teaspoon.
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 whole eggs, separated
1 cup sugar, divided 3/4 & 1/4
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup milk
1 can evaporated millk
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
Icing:
1 pint heavy cream
3 tablespoons sugar
Preparation Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Beat egg yolks with 3/4 cup sugar on high speed until yolks are pale yellow. Stir in milk and vanilla. Pour egg yolk mixture over the flour mixture and stir very gently until combined.
Beat egg whites on high speed until soft peaks form. With the mixer on, pour in remaining 1/4 cup sugar and beat until egg whites are stiff but not dry.
Fold egg white mixture into the batter very gently until just combined. Pour into prepared pan and spread to even out the surface.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Turn cake out onto a rimmed platter and allow to cool.
Combine condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream in a small pitcher. When cake is cool, pierce the surface with a fork several times. Slowly drizzle all but about 1 cup of the milk mixture—try to get as much around the edges of the cake as you can.
Allow the cake to absorb the milk mixture for 30 minutes.
To ice the cake, whip 1 pint heavy cream with 3 tablespoons of sugar until thick and spreadable.
Spread over the surface of the cake.
