Tres Leches Cake

 

Right now, Y's work team is hosting/training two men from Malaysia. Y has been working quite closely with one of them. The man's wife had a baby a few weeks before I gave birth to T, so Y and the dude have had a lot to talk about. The men are here for nearly two months. I figured they might be lonely on the weekends, given that it is just the two of them and neither of them speak Japanese, so I told Y he should invite them over for lunch. One of the men is Muslim (the other is of Chinese descent), so I knew I would have to either go downtown to get the meat or just keep it vegetarian - I opted for vegetarian. I made Mexican food - mulletes, quinoa salad, guacamole and a tres leches cake for dessert.

 

I hadn't made a tres leches in over a year and a half, so I was quite excited to do so! I used Alton Brown's recipe with just a few minor changes. I started by mixing the dry ingredients and adding in a bit of cinnamon. 

 

As per the recipe, I moved right along to creaming the butter and adding the sugar.

Next in were the eggs and vanilla.

Finally the dry bits.

I was feeling lazy, so I just plopped the batter into the baking dish and popped it in the oven. I totally should have done my little mummy trick (wrapping the tin with wet strips of towel) to keep the cake level. I will remember this for next time - more on that later.

While that was in the oven, I got working on the liquid bit. I only used half of the amount of evaporated milk because the grocery store was out and I only had one tin in the house. I also added two cinnamon sticks and simmered all of the liquids for about 5 minutes stirring constantly. Then I let it sit and cool off while the cake baked and then cooled.

It took a while, but the cake eventually cooled down.

I got to town poking it with a fork.

Then I poured the liquid over the top.

As you can see, the liquid pooled around the edges. This is why I should have done the mummy thing. The center of the cake didn't take in anywhere near the same amount of liquid as the sides did leaving the middle pieces quite dry. I was super bummed, but Y didn't seem to mind.

Sooner than you would imagine, all of that liquid was soaked up and the cake was ready to be refrigerated.

The next morning, I whipped up the cream. Yum.

Then I frosted the cake.

And then we ate!

Lunch with the Malaysians was absolutely lovely. They were both such nice men. I had a lot of fun talking to them and learning more about Malaysian and Muslim culture. Now I really want to visit Malaysia one day - apparently the beaches are gorgeous!!