Thai Tea Tres Leches Cake

Tres leches cakes are so yummy. So is Thai tea, so why not both! And also, why not layered! (well, it’s annoying, so that’s why not..but I tried anyways).

Recipe is adapted from Allrecipes Tres Leches cake. Looks long but it’s pretty straightforward.

1. Thai Tea Cake:

• 190g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• 112 g butter (stick), room temp
• 200 g granulated sugar
• 5 eggs
• 3 g vanilla extract
• 20 g Thai tea mix, ground up

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease your pans.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, and ground up Thai tea mix.
3. Cream butter and sugar. Once incporated, add in vanilla extact and eggs.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, a little at a time.
5. Distribute evenly to multiple pans (I think I did ~180g across 4 pans).
6. Bake for 20-25 min until a toothpick comes out cleanly.
7. Remove cakes onto a large baking tray. They’l probably shrink a bit and should come out easily due to greasing.

2. Thai Tea Milk Mixture:

• 475 g milk (I used whole, but use whatever)
• 14 ounce can condensed milk
• 12 ounce can evaporated milk
• 40-50 g Thai tea mix (You could maybe do less if you steep for longer)

1. Heat the milk and evaporated milk in a saucepan until boiling. Add the Thai tea mix, bring back to boil, and then turn off heat and let steep. The longer the better.
2. Add condensed milk to a bowl and then add the strained Thai tea milk mixture. Mix fully.
3. Grab your tray with cake layers. Stab each cake a lot of times with a fork. I understabbed and ended up with some dry spots.
4. Now add the milk mixture onto your cake layers. I used a ladle. When the baking tray started to fill up with the mixture, I poured it back into a bowl and poured even more.
5. Do this until your cake layers mostly saturate with milk.
6. NOTE: You do still need to be able to pick them up, so make sure there’s a little bit of sturdiness left. Not all the milk mixture will be absorbed.

3. Whipped Cream (part 1):

• 600 g heavy whipping cream (can adjust to smaller layers)
• 20ish g powdered sugar
• 30 g piping gel

1. Chill bowl and whisk attachments or beaters prior.
2. First add the piping gel and a little bit of cream and incorporate.
3. Add rest of cream and whisk until very stiff peaks. This has to be extremely stable, so ensure you take it far enough.

4. Assembly:

1. I have no idea of the optimal way to assemble. I’ll detail how I did it, but ultimately the cake was pretty stable, so it may not require this.
2. Line a cake pans with acetate. And add cling wrap to the bottom. I had to tape two acetate sheets together.
3. Carefully lift a soaked cake layer and place into the bottom of the pan/ acetate tube you just made.
4. Add ~150 g whipped cream and spread and press down to make an even layer.
5. Repeat 3 more times.
6. Freeze several hours - overnight.

5. Whipped Cream (part 2) + Decoration:

• 150 g heavy whipping cream
• 10 g powdered sugar
• 30 g heavy whipping cream
• 4 g Thai tea mix

1. Make the whipped cream as before.
2. For the Thai tea one, first just microwave the 30 g with the Thai tea mix and strain that. Cool down before whipping.
3. Remove acetate from the frozen cake and place onto a cakeboard and all this onto a turn table.
4. Coat with a base layer of whipped cream.
5. For a watercolor effect, add in splotches of Thai tea whipped cream and spread that out as you turn turntable.
6. For ridges, use a spatula (like an offset one) and simply turn turntable and slowly move the spatula upwards, while holding it perpendicular to the cake (in the yz plane).
7. LET THAW before serving. When it’s still frozen or even partially frozen, the Thai tea flavor does not come across.
8. Enjoy!

-Mario