cuatro dulce de leche cake

I was surfing through the food blogs and found this recipe from a bakery in Texas. Now I admit I have never eaten a tres leche cake, so I have no frame of reference. This cake just sounded so yummy especially since my uterus is hating all men.

So a quick perusal of the ingredients, and I realized I had most of the stuff. After work I headed to Wally world to grab some diary and pizza for a sleep over. I spent my evening chatting with friends on yahoo, watching pre-pre-teen boys and boiling cans of condensed milk. Yes, boiling UNOPENED cans of condensed milk. This is the easy way to make dulce de leche. It is so not a west coast thing. Ask a native Californian who is not a foodie and they will look at you weird. So 5 cans of condensed milk in a strainer in a 12qt stockpot with water 4 inches above the cans, on med high heat to a slow boil flipping the cans every 45 min for 4 hours. Then I got tired and I turned off the heat, and let it cool for 8 hours in the water bath. What did I get? Well I learned I could also just let the cans lay on their side and not worry about flipping them. But I did get nice extra thick pudding consistency golden brown dulce de leche.

The next morning it was cake baking time. 2 lbs of butter for 4 cakes were softening at room temp, 4 cups of sugar and 8 eggs. The cakes were nice and dense, smelling heavenly of vanilla and sugar. I did pick up some magi-baking strips and the cakes came out very level and evenly browned. Wohoo! I love me some BillySan. Of course it's an SF company!

So while the cakes cooled I made all the other stuff. The tres leche combo turned into a quatro mixture. I accidently added whole milk,so me not paying attention now have a milk mixture consisting of condensed, evaporated, whole milk, and whipping cream. I did use some for my coffee, yummy.

Using the dulce de leche I mixed 1 c of this thick stuff with 1/2c of warmed whole milk. This is supposed to be a thin caramel sauce from what it looks like. That went into the fridge too.

The carmelized meringue... I'm not sure that turned out right. My torch was low on fuel, so I used a something of Goof's that gave me a nice browning element. The egg whites were room temp since it was a cold day and they had been out all day. The kitchenaid rocks! My candy thermometer met an untimely death, at the hands of Goof, who swears he didn't do it. So what's a girl to do? Use the digital thermomter attached to our handy dandy timer. Gosh, that's one of the best items for $30 I every bought. So I got sugar and a little water on the boil with the temp probe hanging in it waiting for the soft boil stage of 240*. I measure my cup of egg whites and wait. I'm not whipping whites until it's almost time. Well the probe reads 200*, okay time to start whipping. I did it timed it just right, as I got the whites to soft peaks stage the sugar mixture hit 240* I kept a steady thin stream going while the mixer when to work. When it was done I had lovely stiff peak italian meringue.

So finally I had the meringue done and the cakes were completely cooled, so I sliced the cakes only in half, I'm not that talented to do thirds neatly. I may have used too much of my 'tres leche' mixture between the layers, but it was nice, it held the liquid. Frosting is a bitch. I hardly every frost. Well for one, it seems no one can wait for the cakes to cool to add frosting, and another reason, it's hard! I'm not so steady with that darn spatula, offset or straight.

So here I am trying to frost a cake not on a cake pedestal, (yea, another wish item) nor on a proper cakeboard, with this thick meringue. It works but at the same time, it's not as pretty as I would like. I try for the peaks, but remember I hardly ever frost a cake. I really have no experience. It came out okay. Like I said torching is fun. It's neat watching the sugar brown. I drizzled a little of the caramel sauce after I browned the meringue. Slicing the cake was easy. I plated it and did a little dribbling of the caramel sauce, and put some strawberries on the plate too.


I think it turned out quite nicely. Stinky says he loves frosting, but he never finishes a slice that's been properly frosted, he's like me not a true frosting fan. Goof ate his piece and shared some with Lucy too. She seems to enjoy the little licks of frosting.

Will I make this cake again? Yes, but I think I'll avoid the tres leche soaking. I'm gonna try it with a thicker caramel sauce as the filling. A nice caramel cake is just fine. Oh and the massive quanities of dulce de leche? I am told one can of that stuff makes a very nice caramel pie in cookie crumb crust. Hmm now imagine that same pie with pecan pralines in there too!