Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Tres Leches Cake

I know I have not posted in a while and I plan to remedy this. Last week was Trinity's Birthday and I didn't have it in me to go and buy a cake. It's only eggs and flour and they charge wayyyy too much for those things. Originally I had planned to do a Coconut Cake for her birthday but she didn't seem overly excited by that prospect, so the morning of her party being the foolish risk taker that I am I decided to do something else. I tend to do this a lot when I'm baking and it's probably not the best move in the world but I've never failed at it (knocking on wood), besides I'm not gonna make a cake on a Monday night for no reason whatsoever. So I took the risk and I was very pleasantly surprised with the results.

Alton John's Tres Leches Cake

Ingredients
For the cake:
  • Vegetable oil
  • 6 3/4 ounces cake flour, plus extra for pan
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 4 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 8 ounces sugar
  • 5 whole eggs
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
For the glaze:
For the topping:
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 8 ounces sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the cake:
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly oil and flour a 13 by 9-inch metal pan and set aside.
Whisk together the cake flour, baking powder and salt in a medium mixing bowl and set aside.
Place the butter into the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the paddle attachment, beat on medium speed until fluffy, approximately 1 minute. Decrease the speed to low and with the mixer still running, gradually add the sugar over 1 minute. Stop to scrape down the sides of the bowl, if necessary. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and mix to thoroughly combine. Add the vanilla extract and mix to combine. Add the flour mixture to the batter in 3 batches and mix just until combined. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and spread evenly. This will appear to be a very small amount of batter. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until the cake is lightly golden and reaches an internal temperature of 200 degrees F.
Remove the cake pan to a cooling rack and allow to cool for 30 minutes. Poke the top of the cake all over with a skewer or fork. Allow the cake to cool completely and then prepare the glaze.
For the glaze:
Whisk together the evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and the half-and-half in a 1-quart measuring cup. Once combined, pour the glaze over the cake. Refrigerate the cake overnight.
Topping:
Place the heavy cream, sugar and vanilla into the bowl of a stand mixer. Using the whisk attachment, whisk together on low until stiff peaks are formed. Change to medium speed and whisk until thick. Spread the topping over the cake and allow to chill in the refrigerator until ready to serve

Variations: I shingled sliced strawberries and bananas before putting the icing on this cake. Mango would be amazing as well.

Since I made this cake the day that it was served it did not get to refrigerate overnight.  It still came out very good. However, I feel that if it had gotten the opportunity to soak in all of that delicious glaze overnight it would have tasted even better.

Note: If you don't have a stand mixer a hand mixer should give you comparable results so don't let this stop you.

1 comment:

  1. That looks Delicious! Oh I sooo need to get a mixer so I cam make cakes :) (Adam)

    ReplyDelete