Tres leches cake: a soaked pudding straight from Latin America

I confess, the idea of a tres leches cake did not initially appeal to me. A dry sponge soaked in a variety of tinned milks sounds, at best, like bland nursery food and, at worst, tooth-achingly saccharine. ‘Milky’ has never been one of the words that I hope to see in connection with anything other than ‘coffee’ or ‘Way’. But I saw it likened to trifle and curiosity got the better of me – and I’m so glad it did.

Actually, a tres leches cake is not terribly like a trifle at all, although I can see where the comparison came from. Soaked puddings are nothing new, and that’s really what a tres leches cake is. Meaning ‘three milks’, it is made from a simple, vanilla-scented sponge, which is then soaked with three different milks: condensed milk, evaporated milk, and thick cream; on top is a thick layer of barely-sweetened cream.