Tres leches cake is a sturdy, yet airy sponge cake soaked with a combination of sweetened dairy and topped with whipped cream. It’s beloved for its sugary-sweet, milky flavor, but many tres leches cakes can veer towards cloying, without any balance. We developed our Almond and Rum Tres Leches Cake to incorporate more grown-up flavors: something to bring contrast to the sweet elements, something to cut through all of the dairy, and a sponge cake that is a bit more refined.

Rompope inspires better flavor

Tres leches often is one-note—milk on milk, bland on bland, sweet on sweet. When we decided to develop a tres leches cake, we took inspiration from rompope, or “Mexican eggnog.” We incorporated rum and cinnamon to capture the rompope essence, but included a few other flavorful swaps— like using some almond flour for a nutty element and sour cream in the whipped cream topping to provide a tangy contrast to all that sweetness. (Bonus: The sour cream helps stabilize the topping.) The sharpness of the rum further cuts through the dairy, so your palate never gets saturated with richness.

Five flavors, five different types of dairy

This tres leches cake has five key flavors: almond, rum, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Nothing one-note here. Additionally, we incorporated five different types of dairy instead of the usual three. There’s whole milk in the batter, with a soaking liquid that combines evaporated milk, whole milk and sweetened condensed milk (the typical trio for tres leches). A topping of heavy cream and sour cream bring the total to five.

We spent months nailing the texture

We needed a cake that was light and airy, but sturdy enough to hold up to the many milks without sogging out entirely. Aiming for a texture somewhere between a basic sponge cake and a genoise, we call for seven eggs, beaten until they triple in size. Beating the eggs with the sugar helps stabilize the proteins in the egg whites so they can trap a large volume of air, giving the cake a lofty but structurally sound crumb.

We don’t use a ton of flour here—half of it is almond flour, which is naturally gluten-free and helps keep things tender. But almond flour is denser than all-purpose, and it took months of testing to get the ratios just right, adjusting the flour, milk and egg ratios with variations to the amount of baking powder used. Finally, we opted for removing the baking powder altogether; the beaten eggs and milk alone gave us the best rise and texture.

Baking vessels matter all the time, but especially here!

This sponge cake is baked in an un-greased pan and cooled upside down. This method, which is typical for a genoise sponge, is how the cake maintains its height without sinking as it cools. But baking is only half the battle. Another challenge we discovered during testing was how the cake would interact with the soaking liquid. When it was baked in a glass dish, the cake didn’t cook evenly, and after it was soaked we were left with a gummy layer on the bottom.

A metal pan with tall enough sides for the rise is absolutely crucial. This recipe calls for an un-greased 9-by-13-inch metal baking pan (do not use a nonstick!).

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Willow Montana

Willow Montana is the Production Manager of Digital Media at Milk Street. Willow spends their days coordinating and planning video shoots, managing schedules and overseeing the execution of digital projects. They studied Baking and Pastry Arts at Johnson and Wales University and worked in restaurants while putting themself through six more years of college. They hold a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in English Literature and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Publishing and Writing. Willow is a firm believer in living a slow, quiet life and making things by hand. When they aren’t following the developers around with a camera at the Milk Street office, they may be found at home shaping loaves of sourdough, caring for dozens of houseplants and, occasionally, out in the wild at a punk rock show.