Tres Leches Cake | Basics with Babish

Tres Leches Cake is a cake so delicious that it deserves a Basics of its own. Next time you think about making a boxed mix cake, think about how you could make this instead.

+ Ingredients & Shopping List
For cake:
10 eggs, separated by whites and yolks
1 cup white sugar
9.75 ounces all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
Vegetable oil (for greasing pans)
1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
4 ounces whole milk
Strawberries, thinly sliced for garnish

For Dulce de Leche:
1 1/4 cup white sugar
4 cups milk
1/4 tsp baking soda

For whipped cream:
8 ounces heavy whipping cream
2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

+ Special Equipment:
Stand mixer
Parchment paper
2 round cake pans (10 inches)
Fine mesh sieve

[TarrikX]

this is a lactose intolerance nightmare and I loved watching every second of it

[janellemosquera]

I love how Babish leaves in his mistakes (such as trying to layer this cake) and then gives us advice on how to avoid them

[xassylax]

Fun story: My brother and I made a tres leches cake once. He read the recipe and I mixed everything together. About half way through, he realized that he while he was reading a recipe that was measured in weight, I was assuming it was measured in volume. So we backtracked the best we could (we weren’t about to waste all the ingredients) and got a scale. Only problem was it was this cheap spring scale for dieting, rather than a decent digital scale. This resulted in a 9”x13” cake that weighed close to 10 pounds after it was baked, soaked, and whipped creamed. It was goddamn delicious but jesus criminy was it dense, both literally and flavor wise. It took well over a week to finish because one small piece a day was almost too much to handle. After finally finishing the damn thing, I immediately went out and bought a digital scale. This was several years ago and because I still have tres leches ptsd, I still haven’t tried making it again. 😂

[couwu]

My dad's way to make Tres Leche:
-poke a shit ton of holes on a sara lee pound cake
-fill it with milk and condensed milk
-place it in a fridge
Done 😂😂😂

[mitzyannalee]

I'm lactose intolerant and Mexican. That means there's tres leches cake and stomach pain in every family party I go to 😂 My fave!

[KeatonX]

"[...] there's nothing worse in the world than a dry cake."

Amen to that.

[Turtled]

Babish: I suck at making tres leches cakes...*makes single layer cake*

Mexican moms: " pathetic "

[cosmojg]

5:22 "impress your friends at the upcoming […] chickenpox party"

Boy oh boy did that age well lol

[carsonllorente]

3:26 Julius Caesar when he met up with his good friend and the senate

[Becabear]

Tres leches tastes the BEST after being in the freezer for a while. When its cold, not completely frozen, it just hits different.

[laweafome]

greetings from mexico, may my santa abuela forgive me for doing a tres leches using a gringo's recipe

[juliaf]

I'm wildly uncomfortable with that cake just sitting on your counter and I have no idea why

[uglybirdies]

can you do a basics episode for college students? like how to still make good/healthy(ish) foods with limited resources :)

edit: wow, thanks for all the helpful replies! and all the not-so-helpful ones too, they made me smile. to answer some comments... i do have a meal plan, but on-campus food can get old somewhat quickly. i'll most definitely look into some of the other resources people have mentioned! it's hard to sift through all the generally unhealthy and (pretty bad) microwaved stuff when you search for college recipes. the point of asking for this is because a lot of college kids give up taste or health when feeding themselves, myself included, so i thought that an experienced cook would be a good person to consult. not everyone has access to a full kitchen when living in the dorms, and in my case, it's a kitchen open to all students that you rent time in. so, while i do have a very valuable resource, im still very limited in what i can make based on the basic appliances i can use and the college budget i'm stuck with. cheers!

[xcar]

Tip: I live in Mexico, and normally the Tre Leches cake is square, maybe that shape would help you to do a 2-layers cake and avoid it falls apart.

[ZaxorVonSkyler]

For my dairy free bakers out there, Nature's charm has canned coconut versions of evaperated milk, condensed milk and whip cream!

[Thelacker]

Imaging having the self confidence required to attempt to make a layered tres leches cake. The man's an inspiration, even if it went exactly as I thought it would the second I saw you were making two cakes.

[hotvision]

I had a Bolivian girlfriend that made the best tres leches in the world. Haven't had it since. Babish will you be my Bolivian girlfriend?

[nialld]

I think we're in "Intermediates with Babish" territory now lads

[cesarsain]

It bothers me how he grabbed the first cake that was falling apart it was still edible

[MrBlackLenses]

Fun fact: by adding the dulce de leche, you’ve made a quatro leches