Thanksgiving recipe failure: Tres Leches!

I like to make some new dishes on Thanksgiving when I get to cook.

Sometimes this goes over with a thud.

I made sweet potatoes mashed with pears, which was awesome. I didn't want to have regular mashed potatoes, too. The au gratin potatoes were my solution, however my 7 year old niece was sorely disappointed by this and refused to touch them and was unhappy about NO MASHED POTATOES. Poor thing, I mean, what was I thinking!

I made a Bayless Tres Leches cake. The darn cake would not soak up the three milks and sat on the top and bottom of the cake. The cake was quite dense, but was like a pound cake instead of a sponge. I even poked holes all over it AND it STILL wouldn't soak in. After 30 minutes, Mr. Food Nut kept staring at it going, "It's not soaking it up." I yelled, "Your not helping me!" It tasted fine, but certainly not worth the labor I invested in it. What went wrong?

Any one know an better and easier recipe for Tres Leches?

What about some history? My students will bring homemade examples after birthday parties, or any occasion really. I do not like any version from a bakery, yet. They often used a very fake tasting whipped cream, like that which is in the TWINKIE. Ugh.

i experienced the same disaster with the tres leches twice. does anyone know how to properly make this cake?

This is my favorite tres leches recipe:

http://www.mexgrocer.com/504-pastel-de-tres-leches.html

It comes from Patricia Quintanas excellent book, The Taste of Mexico. I'm not familiar with Bayless' recipe, but I think it is important that the cake be allowed to cool completely before pouring on the milk mixture. I usually pour on a little at a time until it's all absorbed. Sometimes, there is leftover milk, but just a little.

Some recipes use a whipped cream or butter cream icing. I prefer the meringe one as used in Quitana's recipe. For the milk mixture, Quintana's original recipe calls for "evaporated cream". This web site has changed that to "table cream". I tend to use half-and-half.

The history of the cake is controversial. I have a Central American friend who claims it originated in Nicaragua. Likewise, Mexicans and Cubans claim the dish. According to Quintana, her version is from the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

I prefer to make it a few days ahead, but I wait to make and put on the meringue and strawberries until the final day. It is definitely best served at room temp.

Bill/SFNM

I love a Tres Leches cake. It reminds me of birthday cake with melted ice cream. There's a good article about it here
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/d ... ature.html

Several recipes, including the Bayless one I tried, called for cajeta, or a canned milk caramel,(Nestle makes one) instead of cream. It was very thick, until dissolved into the evaporated and condensed milks. I saved the leftover cajeta and melted it in the micro. Then, I poured it on vanilla bean ice cream. Good stuff.

Ann, thanks for finding the article. I actually think the "old" tiramisu is easier to make than Tres Leches. I might just try to make it with a box cake! One never knows....

The Bayless tres leches recipe is one of the most perverse expressions of culinary sadism ever published.

My poor wife, a very good baker, spent untold hours making this thing exactly as specified by the maestro, no small feat as you well know. It more or less sucked for the reasons you stated.

This is one of those foods that I consider the Latin version of a "white trash" dish, like frito pie. Don't take it too seriously, and it can be very good. I know that the recipe varies by country, like flan. However, I would humbly suggest that you take your favorite yellow cake recipe, then pick up the Bayless instructions at the point where you are soaking the cake in the milks and cajeta. I also feel that a thinner cake, while less impressive visually, handles gravity and osmosis (or whatever is happening there) better.

The first and only time I ordered a dessert at Ixczpuzalco, which I like very much, I ordered a piece of Tres Leche and it was terrible. For whatever that's worth...

The cajeta crepes are pretty bad too.

The pineapple upside down cake, though, has a strange hold over me.

I agree that the desserts are far inferior to the other fare at ixcapuzalco.

-ed

PS, I saw your request for history. I would say that the complex, time consuming Bayless recipe is particularly Mexican. Cubans eat the dish, but its hardly as prominent in the cuisine as in Mexican. On the other hand, the use of various canned milks does give the dish a very Caribbean aspect. Maybe Nicaraguan is right.

On a similar topic, my Guatemalan in law, who is married to a Cuban from Havana, argued with her husband recently about the origins of the somewhat mysterious pudin diplomatico, sort of a soft bread pudding with DelMonte canned fruit salad you see all over Latin America. The Guatemalteca had the better argument, showing real pride in this simple dish. The haughty name is not a joke: only foreign dignitaries had access to delicious American canned fruit cocktail and handed it out as gifts. Canned peaches and grapes became a status symbol in countries where perfect mangoes, gauvas and guanabanas fall to the ground to be eaten by cattle. Not much different from Spam in HI, I guess.

I used Emeril's Tres Leches recipe for a wedding cake I made last October; it was very successful. I made this as a 14" round cake and also 3 half sheet cakes to serve about 150 guests. The recipe calls for papaya and mango slices in between the two layers, so I also cut mango hearts out with cookie cutters and decorated the cake that way...very pretty & romantic. The cake does "weep" a lot, though, due to all the liquid in the cake.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_21054,00.html

Jacki

Hi,

I forwarded a link of this post to Marija Kijac author of The South American Table. She had written a detailed note which was lost when her computer froze. She sent me an abbreviated comment:

I'm going to be brief this time, otherwise I might loose the letter again. I'm not familiar with Rick Bayley's recipe. I believe the cake texture is important and, as far as I know, it has to be sponge-type cake. I have some recipes from Nicaragua, where baking powder is used in amounts up to 2 tablespoons. I'm sure the idea is to have a very light and spongy cake so it can absorb the milk mixture. You may want to suggest they borrow my book from the library and try my recipe for the Cake of Tres Leches. It is well tested and I had never had problems with the cake not absorbing the milks. It also has some history.

I've made a double batch of The Pioneer Woman take on tres leches:

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009 ... ches-cake/

Soaked one tonight for "testing" tomorrow morning (8 hour soak in fridge), need to serve the other one tomorrow night at 8 PM. Does anyone have a recommendation on when I should ideally soak the other one for serving? How consistently does it need to be refrigerated once soaked (can I get away with leaving it at room temp the last two hours?) If frosting with whipped cream, when should that go on? Many thanks for any insights to any questions!

I have made the Pioneer Woman's recipe 3 or 4 times with just a few modifications. The main one is I don't take it out of the pan. I'm not trying to be fancy when I make it. If I need something fancier, I make something else.

I could have sworn that the 1st couple of times, that part of the 3 milks was 1 and 1/4 cups cream. I couldn't find my print out so I printed it out again before Mother's Day and it only had 1/4 c. cream.

I pour ALL the milk over it - the recipe says to hold back 1 c. of the mixture. I have no other use for it and the cake will soak it up, at least if you leave it in the pan.

I was busy Saturday and didn't make it til Sunday morning. I think that was a mistake. I don't know if it was because of not making it the day before or because I am 90% sure that the previous versions I made had 1 1/4 c. cream along with the sweetened condensed and evaporated milks, but I found it a bit dry. It was fantastic the next day.

I want to work on a coconut milk version. I'll post that once it's perfected.

The latest issue of Fine Cooking has an article about tres leches, here is their vanilla version:
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/clas ... -cake.aspx

They also have coffee, chocolate, coconut, and berry-topped versions. I generally find FC recipes to be very well-tested and reliable, but I haven't tried his cake yet. It's on my list though-- I will report back. The hardest part will be choosing which variant.

Cheers, Jen

I use Alton Brown's recipe, it is wonderful, for the tres milks I use half and half, evaporated milk and sweetened condensed. This recipes uses a scratch cake.... When I'm in a hurry I use a box yellow cake, no one can tell the difference and my Dad is a tres leches fiend!

Thanks for the additional insights. My first Pioneer Woman batch turned out well, extremely spongy, and held the milk mix with no reserve. I went with a 12 hour soak and applied the whipped cream 2 hours before serving; it was still cool, stable, and devoured after that sitting time at the reception. I'm not sure, though, that I'd make the vanilla again; cajeta, rum, or coconut all sound much more worth time and bowls with the hand mixer.

Santander wrote:Thanks for the additional insights. My first Pioneer Woman batch turned out well, extremely spongy, and held the milk mix with no reserve. I went with a 12 hour soak and applied the whipped cream 2 hours before serving; it was still cool, stable, and devoured after that sitting time at the reception. I'm not sure, though, that I'd make the vanilla again; cajeta, rum, or coconut all sound much more worth time and bowls with the hand mixer.

I was worried about it the 1st time I made it, it looked really spongy, but it does soak up the milks very well. It does help to have a 5 qt Kitchenaid with a 2nd bowl.