With the flavor of Thai tea pairing so well with sweetened condensed milk, I thought a mash-up of the classic tres leches cake and Thai tea would be fun to make. So I made it, and the guinea pigs people liked it. I made it once more a few days later. And once more people liked it. Just to be sure, I made it again last night for a small gathering. And, cha-waep.*
This is not considered classic or authentic in any part of the world. It’s just good.
You probably can’t tell from the photograph above, but the cake is soaked to the point of saturation with three kinds of milk: sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream. Every bite tastes like a piece of sponge cake that has been dunked into room temperature Thai tea with milk. Sounds gross. Tastes good.
For this, you can use any tres leches cake recipe which you’ve already tried and liked, adding 2 tablespoons of loose Thai tea to the batter. But if you like something a little lighter — spongier — you can use my Thai tea cake recipe. Simply halve it and bake it in an 8×8-inch baking dish (choose a baking dish that you can serve the cake in, because we’re not going to unmold it). Once the cake has cooled, put 3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk, 3/4 cup evaporated milk, and 1/2 cup heavy cream into one of those Pyrex measuring cups with a spout. Pour the mixture all over the cake while it’s still in the pan, making sure every part of the cake gets the milk treatment. Once all of the milk mixture has been absorbed into the cake (this takes about 20 minutes), whip up one cup (8 fluid ounces) of heavy whipping cream and spread it all over the top of the cake (the cake is already pretty sweet, so I don’t sweeten the whipped cream topping. But if you’d like it sweeter, you can certainly add 1/4-1/2 cup of powdered sugar to the whipping cream when you whip it). Cover the cake pan with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2-3 hours.
This should be enough for 6-8 people.
*Thai slang for something that appears then disappears in a blink of an eye.
