Daring Bakers September: Pastel de Tres Leches

Inma of la Galletika was our Sept. 2013 Daring Bakers’ hostess and WOW did she bring us something decadent and delicious! Pastel de Tres Leches or Three Milk Cake, creamy yet airy, super moist but not soggy.. just plain delish!

I've made different tres leches cake recipes before, but I think this is my favorite. The warm milk mixture soaked in really well, and cooking it allowed me to bring a caramelized flavor to the milk. I usually see tres leches cake layered and/or decorated with strawberries, but while blueberries are in season, they're my berry of choice. Plus, blueberries and cream cake just sounded awesome.


I overwhipped the whipped cream, not quite into butter, but it looks like ricotta. Which still doesn't sound bad, since sweetened ricotta is still fantastic in its own right--cannoli cake, anyone??




Mmm, looks like moist.


I don't have a tall cake pan, so I just baked two short cakes in the two pans I have.


The tres leches mixture. I didn't keep stirring, so some of the milk solids caramelized a little, but they tasted really good. If they'd tasted burnt, I wouldn't tossed the whole mixture out.


Soaking the cakes.


I layered the whipped cream and blueberries onto the top layer.


Then slipped the soaked bottom layer out of the cake pan, took a deep breath, and ...


Flipped it onto the top layer. I removed the plastic wrap from the bottom layer.


Put my cake plate onto the bottom layer.


And carefully did another flip-dee-doo.


And that's how I went about the daunting and seemingly intimidating task of building a layered tres leches cake. It worked with this recipe, but I wouldn't try it with a recipe where you soak the cake totally in milk mixture until it's just a soggy lump. Then you'd have like a trifle mush or something.

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