On
a recent gourmet getaway to Aspen, I had the pleasure of tasting a
fantastic Tres Leches cake at the Hotel Jerome (pictured below). Chef
Christopher Keating, crediting his wife for the recipe, explained it was
one of the items that he just couldn’t take off the dessert menu. As I
made my way through the moist, milky goodness, I knew why — this was a
great cake.I'm sure I'd had it before, but I couldn't recall where or when, so it was like tasting it for the first time. Normally a soggy cake would not be a good thing, but here it's genius. The cake is soaked with a sweet milk syrup made from condensed milk, evaporated milk, and half and half (hence the name, Tres Leches). It's like eating cake and drinking milk, but in the same bite!
I
won't pretend this version is better than the Hotel Jerome's
made-from-scratch recipe, but since this is my Mom's version, it's at
least a tie. She would have normally made this from scratch also, but
time was short, and the humidity was high (life-threateningly high), so
she used a yellow box cake mix, which worked just fine.