Torta de las Tres Leches

Rose's Heavenly Cake, Page 211: Torta de las Tres Leches

I have difficulty pronouncing the name of this cake....also implies that i've never even heard of this cake before nor  have i tasted it. I admit i'm bias, the thought of a very wet cake all soak up in milk doesn't seem very appetizing to me.

I woke up in the morning, figured i better make the Leche mixture first. Half awake, I mixed ALL the ingredients together in a huge pot! Didn't seem right, so i read instructions again and realised that i should only mix the milk & sugar together, reduce it by half..then add the condense milk and the heavy cream.   No choice, had to throw alway all the milk and start all over again.  Can i just say that i HATE the smell of reducing milk... (even though it is not as bad as parmesan cheese which i think smells exactly like baby's vomit...*sorry*..).... made me sick.  So i cheated - got my domestic helper to watch the fire and told her when the mixture is reduced to 2.5 cups to pour in the condense milk & heavy cream.  Anyway, are we suppose to pour in the condense milk and heavy cream when the reduced milk is still hot or after it has been cooled?  Since the instruction didn't say to wait till cool..i just told my assistant (hahaha) to pour in almost immediately after transferring to a huge bowl. After, i realized that the 'fats/oil' from the heavy cream and condense milk will separate (when mix with hot milk), surface to the top and harden when it is cold..so how? No choice..so i scraped it off! I'm definitely not going to redo and smell the reducing milk all over again...

Making the sponge cake wasn't difficult. In fact my sponge cake didn't crack and looked quite good imo - since i was expecting a crack. See the photo below..my sponge cake looked great doesn't it?

When the cake cooled, i removed a little of the bottom crust first  - (bottom crust which actually looked quite good so i didn't know if i should remove or not - but i did follow instructions and removed a little). After, I removed the top crust which came off quite easily.  Ok..i ended up somewhat with only 4 cups of milk...much lesser than the 4-2/3 cups mentioned in the book.  But in the end i didn't pour in the entire 4 cups of milk i had left. I only pour in about 3.5 cups..since the cake looked like it's quite "bloated". I didn't really want a too soggy cake either.

The sponge cake all soaked in milk - looks quite awful doesn't it?  If i had to eat that cake above, i would feel sick even before tasting it...  But it's ok because i realised after the next day, the wet left-over crust can be scraped off quite easily and you'll end up with this nice cake...(see pic below)... ah..much better isn't it? Already more appetizing, i think.

After removing the soggy left over crust..my cake is ready to be covered with whipped cream. I decided to use whipped cream instead of heavy cream because i find whipped cream more stable than heavy cream, or probably just my imagination.  I added a few drops of red coloring, frosted the cake and piped flowers around, i wanted to pipe in a large rose in the centre of the cake but ran out of whipped cream. So here it is my cake all covered & decorated..:)

The inside of the cake (in the pic above) looks spongy and dry but it's actually soaking wet with milk.  I'm actually glad that i didn't pour in all the milk, because even with 3.5 cups of milk, the cake is still very wet.

Verdict:-   This is the first time we tasted Tres Leches. My daughter said it's pretty unique and rather different but she likes it.  My husband said it's good..different from the usual cakes but it's good.  Me?  It's better than what i imagined it would be.  It's good, however, i do find it far too sweet for my liking...i can only eat a really tiny slice each time.. Tiny slice - reminds me of the movie "Confessions of Shopaholic" where this Rebecca Bloomwood's (Isla Fisher's character) mom offered Kristen Scott Thomas' character a slice of cake, she kept saying smaller smaller..and in the end cake was really really tiny..LOL!

PS: You can apparently make your own condense milk.  To make your own condense milk, check out Mary's blog at KeepLearningKeepSmiling.  Link to her recipe http://www.keeplearningkeepsmiling.com/2010/01/14/how-to-make-condensed-milk

Oh...and I baked Rose's Chocolate Streusel Coffee Cake again but into 24 cupcakes (made double portion of batter) for Church. Again i had left over streusel, melted it with the left over sour cream and piped it over the cupcakes.. Taste great in cupcakes too! :)