A tres leches cake (; , or ), also known as pan tres leches (), is a

sponge cake Sponge cake is a light cake made with egg whites, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Some sponge cakes do not contain egg yolks, like angel food cake, but most of them do. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated ...

—soaked in three kinds of

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digest solid food. Immune factors and immune-modula ...

evaporated milk Evaporated milk, known in some countries as "unsweetened condensed milk", is a shelf-stable canned cow’s milk product where about 60% of the water has been removed from fresh milk. It differs from sweetened condensed milk, which contains adde ...

, condensed milk, and whole milk. ''Tres leches'' is a very light cake, with many air bubbles. This distinct texture is why it does not have a soggy consistency, despite being soaked in a mixture of three types of milk.

Popularity and origins

Tres leches cake is a uniquely traditional Latin American cake. It can be found all across Latin America, especially so in Central American countries such as Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and Nicaragua, which all claim an origin to the cake. Recipes for soaked-cake desserts were seen in

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

as early as the 19th century, in countries like El Salvador, likely a result of the large cross-cultural transfer which took place between Europe and the Americas.

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...

is one of the countries where tres leches cake has become popular. Recipes appeared on

Nestlé Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other metrics, since ...

condensed milk can labels in the 1940s, which may explain the cake's widely disseminated popularity throughout Latin America as the company had created subsidiaries in Argentina, Chile, Panama, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela in the 1930s. The cake is popular in Central and South America, North America, and many parts of the Caribbean, Canary Islands, as well as in

Albania Albania ( ; sq, Shqipëri or ), or , also or . officially the Republic of Albania ( sq, Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares ...

Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...

North Macedonia North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Yugoslavia. It ...

, and some other parts of

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. In the US, the cake first became popular in the 1980s beginning in Miami due to Latin American immigration. The popularity then spread across the US, possibly from Los Ranchos restaurant in Miami, which featured it on its menu when it opened in 1981. The cake was so popular from Los Ranchos, that it was featured its recipe on fliers, which were pervasively distributed. Cookbook ''The Joy of Cooking'' included a recipe for tres leches in the 1997 edition.

Variations

A variety of ''tres leches'' known as ''trileçe'' became popular in the Balkans and Turkey around 2015. One theory is that the popularity of Brazilian soap operas in Albania led local chefs to reverse-engineer the dessert, which then spread to Turkey. The Albanian version is sometimes made literally with three milks: cow's, goat's and water buffalo's, though more commonly a mixture of cow's milk and cream is used.

References

{{Mexican cuisine Cakes Costa Rican cuisine Cuban cuisine Albanian cuisine Macedonian cuisine Spanish desserts Turkish desserts Latin American cuisine Mexican desserts Nicaraguan cuisine Puerto Rican cuisine Venezuelan cuisine Milk dishes