Tres Leches Cake Recipe

Today I wanted to introduce you to the most popular dessert of the last days. I guess it is also known as Balkan dessert or Bosnian dessert. But given that the name of the dessert is in Spanish, that's not quite right. The original name of the dessert is tres leches cake, or three milk cakes. These three milks are evaporated milk, that is, milk thickened by evaporating water, sweetened condensed milk, that is, milk thickened by boiling with sugar and heavy cream. Since we do not have the first 2 dairy products, I used normal milk and milk powder instead, but I did not change the cream.

Please do not mix milk powder with coffee whiteners. Milk powder is powdered milk obtained by completely evaporating the water of milk. You can find it in the cake material sections of the grocery stores. What is milk powder to make your job easier? You can watch my video and see what kind of package it is sold in. I suspect the cream requires a similar explanation. It is not whipped cream or pastry cream. What is the cream? You can get detailed information by watching my video.

If you are new to the kitchen, I recommend that you skip this recipe or if it is a dessert you like very much, make it with someone with a culinary experience. While it is a very practical dessert for someone with experience in the kitchen, some of the methods used (such as whisking egg whites and caramel making) may seem a bit complicated and incomprehensible to someone who is starting to cook. From my readers, I know very well how someone who just started cooking gets depressed in the face of failure in the kitchen. Therefore, it is useful to start with baby steps at first and try these and similar recipes in the future.

Our recipe has a few noteworthy features. First of all, you should whisk the egg whites very well. After whisking, it should be solid enough not to flow or spill when you turn the whisk bowl upside down. When adding powdered ingredients to eggs and mixing them, you should be very sensitive so that the egg whites do not go out.

The baking phase of the cake also requires some attention. Since it has a very delicate texture, when the heat gets too much, the outside is baked and the inside remains raw. After you think the cake is cooked and take it out of the oven, it collapses and becomes stiff. So be sure to take the toothpick test. If the inside is still not cooked even though the top is sufficiently cooked, reduce the temperature by 10 degrees and cover the oven dish with aluminum foil so that it does not touch the cake and continue to cook. Since the foil will protect the upper part of the cake from direct heat, it will continue to cook without burning.

Since its cake and caramel are sweet enough, no sugar is used in its syrup. The easiest part is preparing the sherbet. You just need to whisk all the ingredients one by one.

Instead of making caramel sauce at home, you can also use instant sauce. However, I would say read the ingredients section of ready-made sauces first. If you still want to use it, the choice is yours. I guess the most distracting part of the recipe is the preparation of caramel. It is necessary to stand at the beginning and mix the sauce all the time. But believe the result is worth all the effort. It turns out to be the best caramel sauce you can ever eat. Since I am a caramel nut, I made the sauce quite abundant. If a thin layer of caramel on the cake is enough for you, you can cut the sauce ingredients in half.

There is one final point I want to emphasize about the recipe; When you whisk the syrup, it becomes quite foamy. After pouring the sherbet onto the cake, a foam layer forms on the cake. Remove this layer by scraping it with a spoon, spatula or your hand.

You can watch the recipe in th following video. I know it is in Turkish, but I think it can give idea about the process and textures of the cake, syrup and sauce. I hope you like it.

Bon appetit...