Tres Leches (Milk Cake): With Great Tips

We love Mexican food in this house so we decided to celebrate Cinco de Mayo a day early by having tacos, horchata, tortilla chips from Food Lion (which are the best, from the deli section which they make fresh), homemade guacamole and tres leches cake. Tres Leches cake is one of my favorites and I thought it would be difficult to make but it isn’t! It’s just time-consuming so give yourself a few hours to prepare before you want to eat it, if not making it the night before. I made the big mistake of pouring out the excess liquid down the sink when I should have poured it into a jug, I think this happened because my pan was smaller than it should have been and I didn’t have tons of time to let it soak into the cake and down to the bottom of the dish. One of the best parts of Tres Leches is the milk mixture that sits at the bottom of the cake, so I definitely recommend pouring the liquid slowly over the cake and stop when it cannot soak anymore when this happens to transfer the mixture to something you can keep it in to pour over individual servings.  This recipe will give around 18 servings and includes my modifications. 

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ½ cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 5 eggs
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk
• 1 ½ cups heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour one 9×13 inch baking pan.
• Sift flour and baking powder together and set aside.
• Cream butter and the 1 cup sugar together until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time (I recommend cracking them all into a jug prior to make it easier to add) and the 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract; beat until fully combined.
• Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture 2 tablespoons at a time; mix until well blended. Pour batter into prepared pan.
• Bake for 30 minutes. Pierce cake all over, completely through the cake.
• When the cake has finished baking remove from oven and completely cool, about 1 hour.
• While the cake is cooling, combine the whole milk, condensed milk, and evaporated milk together (I would use a jug for easy pouring but be careful because it produces about a quart of liquid). Pour over the top of the cooled cake (slowly).
• Put into a refrigerator to cool and soak all the liquid until ready to eat. (If there is a lot of liquid sitting on top, pour it into a jug to pour over servings when ready to eat)
• Whip the remaining 1 cup of the sugar, heavy cream and the remaining 1 teaspoon vanilla together until peaks form. Spread over the top of the cake (I add cinnamon at the end but you can top it how you like).