The World Table

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Mexican · Dessert

Tres Leches

  • Intermediate
  • 1 h 30 m
  • roughly 2 of 4 for cost
  • Vegetarian

rich · warm-spiced · floral · silky Leads with richness that coats and comforts, warm spice humming through the middle, melting away silken.

Ingredients

  • Sponge: 5 eggs, 150g sugar, 120g flour, splash vanilla
  • 1 can condensed milk
  • 1 can evaporated milk
  • 250ml cream (in the soak) + more whipped on top
  • Cinnamon

The skills inside

Folding: keeping the air in

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Whip eggs and sugar to ribbon stage; fold in flour. Bake 175°C, 25 min. 25 min
  2. Cool slightly; stab everywhere with a skewer.
  3. Pour the whisked three milks over slowly, in stages. Chill 4+ hours.
  4. Crown with whipped cream and cinnamon.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Folding: keeping the air in 34 recipes

  • The air was actually built first and it shows: whatever was creamed or whipped has changed colour and grown in volume, pale and light rather than dense.
  • The two mixtures were brought closer before being combined: a little of the light one worked into the heavy one first, so the rest is not beaten flat trying to move it.
  • Folded and not stirred: a broad implement down through the middle, across the base, up and over, with the bowl turned between strokes.
  • Stopped the moment the streaks disappear. It is still visibly aerated and holds its shape briefly when the spoon lifts away.
  • Into the tin and into the oven straight away: a batter left standing on the bench gives back the air it was built for.

Where it goes wrong It was stirred until it looked perfectly smooth. Every stroke past the point where the streaks vanish knocks out air that cannot be put back, so the bake comes out dense and short of the tin, and often wet through the middle where there was no structure to hold it.

At the Table

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The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Tres Leches Technique: Tempering a custardThe skill inside this recipe Search YouTube: Rick Bayless on Tres Leches A YouTube search for Rick Bayless and this dish. No affiliation.