Did you ever have a bad day? Ever start feeling down? Say you hopped on the treadmill and your iPod ran out of juice within the first thirty seconds and you were forced to watch a close-captioned episode of Hogan Knows Best. Or maybe your favorite sports team had their top defensive line recruit sniped by the juggernaut that is the University of Florida.
Well, if near-death experiences like the ones above happened to me, I would run out and grab a tres leches from BomBon Cafe, and everything would be better. As you know from one of my very first posts on this blog, I am a huge fan of the BomBon Cafe.
They usually have about five or six different flavors of tres leches. The one pictured above is the caramel flavor. For takeout, they come in a foil, mini pie-tin about two inches in diameter. Getting this cross-section was not easy and forced me to mangle the other half, but I did it for you, my fans…or should I say fan…singular (thanks mom).
As you know, tres leches stands for three milks. So yes, it is a cake soaked in three milks – specifically, evaporated milk, condensed milk, and either whole milk or cream. It has all the creamy, sweet goodness that you would expect from something with so much fat and sugar, but what I really like are the three distinct textures.
Look closely for a second at the pic. You should be able to pick out the three textures.
- Creamy, whipped topping
- Moist cake
- Soaking wet cake dripping with three milks
In my view, the hallmark of a great tres leches is something I call TLMV (tres leches moisture variance ). You see, you want the cake portion to have two separate textures. The top half should be like a regular, moist cake, kind of like you would get from a well-made American style birthday cake. The bottom half needs to be a milk-soaked, dripping layer of saturated cake goodness. BomBon has a good grasp of this subtlety and hopefully, by looking closely at the pic above, you can see this. If not, send me an email and I will get you the full res pic.
When consuming this, you need to execute your bite strategy correctly. I use a fork, not a salad fork, but a long-tonged fork. You start at the top with the fork held vertically, apply pressure downward, perpendicular to the ground, and accelerate evenly until you hit plate. Pull away gingerly with the fork still touching the plate. Then start the upward movement to your mouth by rotating your wrist clockwise (if you’re right-handed) so that the tongs of the fork are immediately ahead of the handle. Good luck.