Tres Leches Cake – vanilla sponge cake with a cinnamon milk soak, whipped cream and fresh strawberries.
Tres Leches Cake
With Cinco de Mayo just two days away, there’s no better time than the present to make a Tres Leches Cake. This flavor has been requested over and over during the past few years and I’m so excited that I finally got around to making my own version.
I’ve always seen Tres Leches Cake in a 13″x9″ pan, but knew that when I did mine, I wanted to turn it into a layered cake. I worried about doing that, though, because a Tres Leches Cake, soaked in a milk mixture, always seemed fragile to me.
After doing some research, I learned that most Tres Leches cakes are made kind of like a meringue with a lot of whipped egg whites to give it a fluffy, sponge-like consistency. Several recipes I looked at also had equal parts sugar and flour. I knew that if I wanted to make a more stable cake for layering, I’d need to add a bit more flour than sugar to my recipe.
I reviewed my Classic Vanilla Cake recipe and compared it to the Tres Leches recipes I had been researching. It wasn’t too far off from the actual ingredients other recipes used, I just needed to adjust my amounts a bit.
I ended up using more flour in my recipe than other Tres Leches recipes so it would for sure be stable enough to be a layered cake once the soak was added.
The Soak
The soak for this cake is made up of heavy cream, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk and cinnamon. The cinnamon gives it a bit of a horchata flavor and I think you’ll love it!
Just make sure to poke holes into your cake after it’s cooled, so when you pour the soak on the cake, it really absorbs into the layers.
The Whipped Cream
The whipped cream filling makes enough for the filling and to add a dollop on top of each slice of cake. To simplify the stabilization process, I used E-Z Gel from Gygi. If you can’t find E-Z Gel, you can also use gelatin to stabilize the whipped cream like I do in my Strawberry Shortcake Cake.
So you recommend making it as a single layer cake. what you showed in the pic isn’t this cake?
It’s usually a single layer cake but I wanted to make It a double.
Hi Courtney,
can this cake be covered in a thick coat of the whipped cream or maybe Swiss meringue ?
I just ordered my acrylic boards and the edges i am soo excited..
thank you,
jess
I would stick to the recipe for this one.
Hello. There are strawberries in the filling for a Tres Leches cake? Just double checking!
It does look wonderful!
Hi Courtney!
I was wondering if there was any way I could replace the gel/gelatin with corn starch?
Dying to make this one!
No, sorry!
If I cannot get evaporated milk can I substitute plain milk ( have only 1%)?
Thank you
No.
Hi!
The recipe says single layer but i like how you made it into a layer cake. Is it possible to do that or will it fall apart?
The recipe is for a 2 layer cake.
Where are the cakes when you soak them? Still in the pans? On a plate, or what?
Just on my counter!
If someone wanted a themed tees leches cake, is there a way to cover such a cake in fondant? Or would it not work because if the soak?
It won’t work.
Hey!
I’m really looking forward to trying this recipe. I was wondering how long the soak process should take? I’m afraid the cake will crumble if I leave it in the milk mixture for too long?
Let them sit in the fridge for at least an hour or two.
Hi Courtney!
I was wondering if you can cover this cake in a buttercream (after layering and filling with the stabilized whipped cream)
Thanks!
It might be too wet for that.
Hey Courtney! We just attempted to make the cake and upon taking it out the center looked a little undone. We proceeded to bake it for 7 more minutes and took it out. We let it cool, went to level the top and the middle was uncooked!😭Any ideas for what we may have done wrong? We weighed the mixture in our pans and checked the oven temperature. Let me know and we will definitely be attempting round 2 soon!
Hi, can the cake layers be made in advance and frozen?
TIA
Yes!
Hi Courtney! Is there a way to stabilize this cake so that the layers don’t slide off when you cut it? I made this and had trouble with the layers sliding. Thank you!!
You can use some straws!
Can you freeze the assembled and frosted cake then defrost for service later? Or is it too wet? Just trying to find options for a small make ahead elopement cake and this sounds delicious.
Yes you can!
I made this recipe this weekend and it was absolutely incredible. I’ve never made Tres Leches (I’ve been baking for 10+ years and have a cake business 😂) and this was SUCH a hit. Really happy to be able to confidently make this. Thank you so much!
This was such a great thing to read! Thank you!