Featured in the November 1999 issue of Texas Monthly

Tres Leches Cake From Cafe Central, El Paso

Cake

9 eggs (room temperature)
11/2cups sugar
12 tablespoons butter (softened)
2 cups all-purpose flour
11/2teaspoons baking powder
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Separate egg yolks and whites, keeping whites at room temperature. In bowl of an electric mixer, cream sugar and butter together until pale yellow and fluffy. Add egg yolks and beat until fluffy again, 2 to 3 minutes on medium-high speed. In a separate bowl combine flour and baking powder. In a third bowl mix milk and vanilla. Alternately add the flour mixture and the milk mixture to the butter mixture (a fourth at a time) until all are combined. Beat until smooth after each addition.

Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form and, using a large spatula, gently but thoroughly fold into flour-and-butter mixture. Grease bottom of a 9- by 13-inch metal baking pan. Pour in batter and bake for approximately 25 minutes, until golden brown. Allow to cool. (May also be baked in an 11.5- by 17.5-inch sheet pan for 20 minutes; this size rises very evenly, helpful for inexperienced cooks.)

Three Milks

2 cups heavy cream
1 five-ounce can (5/8cup) evaporated milk
1 fourteen-ounce can (7/8cup) sweetened condensed milk

Stir the milks together thoroughly; do not beat. Do not refrigerate canned milks before using.

Cream Icing

2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup sugar

Whip cream and sugar together until stiff. When cake is cool, slice or peel off the thin top crust. Ice sides first, creating a small lip on top to catch milk mixture. Pour milk mixture evenly over top of cake (if necessary, poke holes in cake with a knife or toothpick to facilitate soaking; you will probably need only 3/4of mixture). Finish icing top. Refrigerate. (If using an 11.5- by 17.5-inch pan, cut cake in half to make 2 equal pieces. Soak first layer, ice top if desired, and place second layer on top of it. Proceed as above.) Serves 12.

Pastel tres leches ("three-milk cake") appeared in Mexico perhaps a generation ago. It swept through the social set and soon became the thing to serve at fancy parties. A butter cake soaked in three kinds of milk and most often topped with billows of meringue, it is sweet and insanely rich.

Nobody knows where this confection came from. Mexican cooking authority Maria Dolores Torres Yzabal (the co-author of The Mexican Gourmet cookbook) thinks it might have originated in a Mexico City bakery whose name is now lost. In her cookbook The Taste of Mexico, Patricia Quintana says that it first appeared in the state of Sinaloa. To complicate matters further, Mexico-born chef Roberto Santibañez of Austin's Fonda San Miguel has friends in Guatemala and Nicaragua who swear the cake is native to their countries. His pet theory is that it came from a promotional recipe once distributed in Latin America, perhaps on cans of evaporated milk or with a brand of electric mixer.

Wherever it started, tres leches cake has now established itself in Texas. This recipe —from Cafe Central's pastry chef, Maria Devora—replaces the usual meringue with a satiny sugar-cream frosting. Its tres leches are evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and heavy cream. This cake's definitely got milk.
Patricia Sharpe

Grocery
eggs
sugar
butter
flour
baking powder
milk
vanilla extract
cream of tartar
heavy cream
evaporated milk
condensed milk