Tried and True Tres Leches Cake

What do I love more than milk? Three kinds of milk!! Ever since my friend Sunni introduced me to tres leches, I have been hooked! I was a little nervous making this since Sunni only made things that were ridiculously complicated and had a chance of exploding, but I figured it was worth the risk.

While I can't say if this is as good as hers (unfortunately it has been far too long for me to recall), it was pretty fabulous and I will most definitely be making it again. We had a progressive dinner this past weekend with several of our new neighbors and I volunteered to do the dessert course. As my neighbor Kevin would say, this cake was "stupid good". So good that I could only snag a lonely corner piece to take pictures of. Next time I hope to plan a little better and take some shots of it before its completely devoured.

I always get nervous when trying out a new recipe, but this one from Cook's Country did not disappoint. My husband did suggest adding a little dulce de leche / salted caramel drizzle to it next time, but it was fabulous just on its own. So good that I'm even considering throwing tradition out the window and making it for Thanksgiving this year. And I'm not even kidding.

***UPDATE: Since this initial post, this recipe has become a staple in our household. It is so good that I haven't even bothered looking for another recipe. I hope you enjoy!

Mmmmm, tres leches.

Tres leches. Good for just about any time of day. Nom nom nom.

Tres Leches Cake from Cook's Country

Milk Mixture

• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract  

Cake

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 cup whole milk
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

 Whipped Topping

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 tablespoons corn syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. For the milk mixture: Pour condensed milk into large microwave-safe bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Microwave on low power, stirring and replacing plastic every 3 to 5 minutes, until slightly darkened and thickened, 9 to 15 minutes. Remove from microwave and slowly whisk in evaporated milk, cream, and vanilla. Let cool to room temperature.
2. For the cake: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour 13 by 9-inch baking pan. Whisk flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in bowl. Heat butter and milk in small saucepan over low heat until butter is melted; set aside off heat.
3. With electric mixer on medium speed, beat eggs in large bowl for about 30 seconds, then slowly add sugar until incorporated. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until egg mixture is very thick and glossy, 5 to 7 minutes. Reduce speed to low and slowly mix in melted butter mixture and vanilla. Add flour mixture in three additions, scraping down bowl as necessary, then mix on medium speed until fully incorporated, about 30 seconds. Using rubber spatula, scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes (it took me the full 35). Transfer cake to wire rack and let cool 10 minutes.
4. Using skewer, poke holes at 1/2-inch intervals in top of cake. Slowly pour milk mixture over cake until completely absorbed. Let sit at room temperature 15 minutes, then refrigerate uncovered 3 hours or up to 24 hours 
5. For the frosting: Remove cake from refrigerator 30 minutes before serving. With electric mixer on medium speed, beat heavy cream, corn syrup, and vanilla to soft peaks, 1 to 2 minutes. Frost cake and slice into 3-inch squares. Sprinkle with just a tad of cinnamon and serve. (The assembled cake can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.)

Cupcake Critique: Matty Cakes (Atlanta, GA)

Nice texture and crumb, but the icing didn't blow me away.

So I've driven by Matty Cakes hundreds of times, but had yet to try out this Best of Atlanta bakery. Finally on one of my tasting spree Saturdays (sure beats the gym folks), I was able to stop in. While intent on trying their red velvet, I found myself completely awestruck by a designer purse cake they were making. These fondant covered cakes looked better than some of the bags I've seen on Canal Street. As tempted as I was to order a $140 purse made out of cake, I had to remind myself that I was there just to try their red velvet.

The one thing I like about Matty Cakes is that their prices are super reasonable. Their large cupcake is ginormous and only $2.95. To give you an idea of scale, I took a picture of it on top of a quart of paint, and as you can see, it takes up the majority of its surface area. What they call their "mini" cupcake, is in fact a regular sized cupcake that sells for $1.95.

Now for the red velvet. The cake itself was quite good - the flavor was nice, the texture was moist and the color was a beautiful shade of crimson. I found myself a little disappointed however with the icing. It had a very light whipped cream cheese flavor. It would've been fabulous atop a strawberry shortcake, but it didn't quite stand up to the red velvet for me.

A large cupcake from Matty Cakes is almost equivalent to the circumference of a quart of BEHR paint.

What I consider to be the ideal color for red velvet.

Waiting for Gâteau

Remember that book Waiting for Godot that many of us had to read in high school? Well I'm sure none of you felt like Vladimir and Estragon, eagerly awaiting my next post about gâteau (that's French for cake), but I'm here to assure you that I have several new reviews, recipes and stories to share.

In the last two weeks alone, I've done tastings in New Orleans and DC, as well as baked (and blogged about) the yummy cake balls pictured below. It's all coming soon, so don't forget to subscribe to my posts (top right under subscribe). You can also follow my updates on twitter or like The Velveteen Baker on Facebook.

Study Shows Ad Execs Prefer Younger Cakes

For my latest baking adventure I decided to pit two recipes against each other. Both were featured in the New York Times, but published 30 years apart. I wanted to see if people preferred the younger, more contemporary cake (circa 2007) to the older, more traditional one (circa 1977).

As prefaced in an earlier post, today I brought both cakes into my office to conduct a 'taste' study. As part of the survey, I asked that all participants taste both cakes and rate them on a scale of 1-10. Of the 35 advertising executives included in this study, the vast majority preferred the younger (2007) version.

First Runner Up: Circa 1977 Cake (pictured top left)
The older cake hailed from Alabama and was published on April 25, 1977 in an article entitled Red Velvet Cake Returns, Tomato Paste Lingers On (I assure you the recipe has nothing to do with tomato paste). The icing called for a very unique frosting made of butter, sugar, egg yolks, chopped pecans or walnuts, raisins and bourbon or rum. While I planned to make this frosting all along, I hesitated to remember buying bourbon until Sunday. At that point, no matter how good my intentions, Georgia state law simply wouldn't allow me to make this frosting. So I opted for a more traditional ermine (boiled milk) frosting. Overall feedback was that this cake wasn't as moist as the 2007 cake, but still very tasty. This is not surprising considering the 2007 cake had 2 cups of oil, while this one only called for a 1/2 cup of shortening. Next time I'll probably increase it to a full cup of shortening, or replace it with a cup of vegetable oil. And while I do like the ermine frosting, I would opt for a nice cream cheese frosting (like the one in my first recipe) instead.


The Winner: Circa 2007 Cake (pictured bottom left)
The younger cake was adapted from The Confetti Cakes Cookbook by Elisa Strauss and published on February 14, 2007. The accompanying icing was adapted from The Waldorf-Astoria Cookbook. This recipe is for a three layer cake, but I forced it into two pans with 2" sides and used heating cores to compensate. The recipe creates a lot of batter, so I'd recommend making three layers, but a really thick two layer cake can be done. Overall I felt the cake had too much cocoa powder (1/2 cup), but several of the testers seemed to prefer it. If you're going for a more traditional red velvet, I think you could easily reduce the cocoa anywhere from 2 to 4 tablespoons.

See the detailed recipes below, along with a nifty bar chart that makes my study appear entirely more official.

 
1977 CAKE RECIPE:
The Cake:

1/2 cup white shortening (consider replacing with 1c veg oil)
1 1/2 cups sugar

2 egg
2 to 4 tablespoons cocoa
 (I used 2)
1/4 cup red food coloring (I used 2 fl oz instead)

1 teaspoon salt
1 c buttermilk
2 1/2 cups sifted flour
 (I used cake flour instead of APF and added 5T to compensate)
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda


1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. 
Cream together the shortening and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat one minute on medium speed.

3. Blend the cooca and red food coloring (the amount of coloring may be reduced but the cake will not have its traditional vivid red color) and make a paste. Add this and the salt to the creamed mixture. Blend the vanilla and buttermilk. Alternately add this and the flour to the creamed mixture, beating constantly. Blend the vinegar and soda and beat this in.

4. Meanwhile, butter and flour two nine-inch cake pans. Shake out the excess flour. Add the cake, batter to each pan and bake 25 to 30 minutes.

5. Remove the cake layers and let cool on a rack. Turn out.

Ermine Frosting:
1 1/2 cups cold milk
7 tablespoons + 1 1/2 teaspoons sifted cake flour (measure after sifting)
2 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Mix milk and flour in a saucepan; simmer over medium heat until thickened, stirring constantly.
2. Pour into a bowl. Chill until cool to the touch. 
3. Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. 
4. Add in chilled milk mixture, and beat until smooth and fluffy.

2007 CAKE RECIPE:
Red Velvet Cake:

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
3½ cups cake flour

½ cup unsweetened cocoa (I'd reduce this to 2-4T)
1½ teaspoons salt

2 cups canola oil

2¼ cups granulated sugar

3 large eggs

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) red food coloring
 (I used 2 ounces instead)

1½ teaspoons vanilla

1¼ cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons baking soda
2½ teaspoons white vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place teaspoon of butter in each of 3 round 9-inch layer cake pans and place pans in oven for a few minutes until butter melts. Remove pans from oven, brush interior bottom and sides of each with butter and line bottoms with parchment.
2. Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.
3. Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. With machine on low, very slowly add red food coloring. (Take care: it may splash.) Add vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.
4. Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.
5. Divide batter among three 9" pans, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Let cool in pans 20 minutes. Then remove from pans, flip layers over and peel off parchment. Cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Icing w/ Mascarpone:
2 cups heavy cream, cold
12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
12 ounces mascarpone
½ teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

1. Softly whip cream by hand, in electric mixer or in food processor. Cover in bowl and refrigerate.
2. Blend cream cheese and mascarpone in food processor or electric mixer until smooth. Add vanilla, pulse briefly, and add confectioners’ sugar. Blend well.
3. Transfer cream cheese mixture to bowl; fold in whipped cream. Refrigerate until needed.

Better with Age?

I simply couldn't decide on a single recipe for my next baking challenge, so instead I chose two.

Since many of the contemporary red velvet recipes differ by only a few ingredients, I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose it with an older, and hopefully more traditional recipe.

I went to the New York Times archives to do some digging, which by the way, is an amazing resource for baking cakes. Not only are their cake recipes some of the most popular, but you can search their archives back to 1851. You won't have any luck finding red velvet until the 20th century, but a good resource nonetheless.


For my first contender I chose a recipe that was published in the NYT on April 25, 1977. Earlier that same year, the NYT published a Q&A about red velvet cake that prompted a flood of responses from readers claiming to have the more authentic recipe. The recipe that was chosen and eventually published was from a woman named Carolyn A. Knutsen who claimed that hers was "an old Southern standard cake" that was passed down from her family in Alabama. Authentic? Perhaps not, but a solid first round pick.

For the opposition I settled on another NYT recipe, but this time published in 2007. I figured, what better competitor to the '77 recipe than one from the same authoritative source, published 30 years later?

And as such, the gauntlet has been thrown. I'll be baking both cakes this weekend and bringing them into my office on Monday to determine the winner. I'll follow up with the recipes, photos and results soon!

Cupcake Critique: Gigi's Cupcakes

Today at lunch I ran over to Gigi's Cupcakes for my first of many cupcake critiques around Atlanta. Gigi's is a chain, so right off the bat I had some preconceived notions. They have a wide variety of cupcakes from Italian Cream Wedding Cake, Peach Cobbler and Cherry Cordial, but I of course was interested in none other than Scarlett's Red Velvet.

The ECD (that's Executive Creative Director for the non-ad folks) at my agency @carlrwarner said to me that Gigi's has the perfect icing-to-cupcake ratio, but I respectfully must disagree. If there is enough icing on one cupcake to wallpaper a 10'x12' bedroom, that is too much. Surely from looking at the pictures it may seem I'm exaggerating, but keep in mind this cupcake suffered quite a bit of shrinkage on the ride home in this Atlanta heat.

In critiquing this cupcake I examined several key factors: appearance, flavor, texture and color.
So let's start with one of my favorite parts: the icing. The cream cheese icing was actually quite good, but perhaps too much of a good thing. The cake itself was less than desirable. The cake had far too much cocoa and actually tasted more like devil's food than anything else. Not only did it not taste like red velvet, but the cocoa also made the cake far too dark (ie violet oxide). The density was good, but perhaps because of the cocoa overload, tasted a little dry and lacked that velvety texture. I thought the vanilla custard filling would make up for it, but not so much. Admittedly I can be a snob when it comes to some of these things, but on a scale of 1 to 10, I give Gigi's a 4. I am sure some of their other cupcakes are fabulous, but their red velvet just doesn't cut it.