Tres Leches Cake – Speedy Version

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this recipe. It’s super easy, literally no work at all. And the recipe and process is so easy, that I only followed the recipe the very first time. The best part of it? The cake is SO delicious, my kids prefer this cake over fancy expensive professionally made birthday cakes since 2 years ago! However, before you promise your little one you will make this cake for them, make sure tell them it’s going to be ready tomorrow, because the cake needs to sit in the fridge over night to soak up the milky goodness.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1 box of store bought yellow cake mix (yep, that’s a great start, isn’t it?)

Eggs, vegetable oil and water as required by the yellow cake mix box instruction

For the tres leches part:

1 can of sweetened condensed milk, any brand

1 can of evaporated milk, any brand

2 cups of any kind of milk you have in your fridge, or a mixture of milk of what you have. Can’t be simpler than that! I used half and half, heavy cream, 2%, whole, fat free, soy, almond, coconut milk…

If you want to go fancy and want to cover up imperfections:

1 can of whip cream (or you can whip heavy whipping cream, which I think is actually worth the effort)

2 cans of fruit jam / spread of your choice (I made strawberry jam myself this time. It’s my son’s birthday after all)

How to:

Follow the instruction on the cake mix box and bake the cake. Use either 9″ x 13″ pan, or 2 off 8″ pans (especially if you want to gift one and keep one, and you will be GLAD you kept one!) Pay attention to the different time required to bake the cake, based on the baking dish size.

After the cake is done, take it out of the oven, leave on the stove top to cool (I am not a cooling rack person, and always seem to lose mine anyway) for roughly 10 minutes.  Use a wooden spatula, or small rolling pin, poke the cake all the way to the bottom, literally every 1 inch distance or so. Don’t worry about the look of the cake, you will either keep it for your family, in which case, trust me, everyone will devour the cake and no one will pay attention to the look of the cake, or, you can cover it up with the whipping cream.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and whatever milk you have on hand. The third kind, don’t stress too much about the quantity, a bit more a bit less doesn’t really matter. That’s another reason why this is my kind of recipe. Make sure scrape the bottom of the bowl with your whisk, the sweetened condensed milk tends to stay at the bottom, way longer than you may think it would. Have fun with this process, put on your favorite music and dance a little, it won’t hurt! Or, you can recruit your little helpers, they always love this part.

Carefully pour the milk mixture onto the poked cake(s). Divide evenly, if you are baking 2 cakes. It may seem like the cake(s) are swimming in the milk mixture. Don’t panic, the milk goodness will be all absorbed by the cake, and the cake will be so luscious and soft, and melt in your mouth.

At this point, I normally cover the cake with plastic wrap and stick them into the fridge and fight the urge to taste it. Next day, take the cake out of the fridge, slather the fruit jam / spread and cover with whipped cream. I promise you, proper dessert is served!

Alterations to the cake:

In the cake mix, add a can of drained and pressed crushed pineapple, use coconut milk as the third milk, you have your piña colada version cake

You can add a can of any sort of chopped fruit, very well drained into the cake mix

At the bottom of the baking dish, sprinkle brown sugar, arrange rings of pineapple and put a cherry in the center, dump the cake batter on top and follow the rest of the recipe – fancy pineapple upside down cake version

The changes are endless, let me know what you did with this, I’d love to try your version too!