Reader Henry asks: Can one reduce the amount of sugar and still be able to make dulce de leche sucessfully, albeit less sweet? I’ve never tried that. However where dulce de leche is concerned, thickness and sugar content go hand in hand. Subtract sugar and the end product will have a thinner consistency, however you […]
READ ONI’ve received an unusual amount of positive response from readers who’ve made the tres leches cake over the past week, from places as close as Indianapolis and as far away as Greece and India. The message is: life is better when your mouth is full of three milks cake. So if you’ve been on the […]
READ ONLooks like I picked a bad week to go on a coffee cake baking bender. Business and family schedules are going to preclude me from doing any baking at all this week, and “show and tell” was the lion’s share of what I had planned. So it looks like I’ll be on an unexpected hiatus. […]
READ ONHere’a another one of those so-broad-I-fear-to-take-it-on kinda projects. Coffee cake can be so many things, from sponge cake to bundt cake to streusal. For me it’s a pastry made from laminated dough — basically a big Danish. So that’s how I’m gonna roll with coffee cake this week. If there’s time I may get into […]
READ ONThe génoise cake layer is the most challenging part of a tres leches cake. Once that’s in hand, you can pretty much just relax and have fun. I find the best finished cakes happen when you have the layers and any time-consuming condiments completed at least a day ahead of time. If you can arrange […]
READ ONA lot of people ask me: Joe, why did you get into blogging? My standard answer is: for the money, obviously. If I had to pick a second reason, it would be the fringe benefits. This past Monday was an excellent example, as I had the pleasure of being invited to a V.I.P. tasting event […]
READ ONI thought about just referring all you prospective tres leches cake makers to the basic génoise tutorial and saying: just add nuts! However the process for tres leches génoise is slightly more involved than that. My solution: to create a new tutorial that mixes old and new photographs. What? It’s not like my lighting or […]
READ ONThe main layer is the basic génoise recipe from the site, only with some toasted almonds added. It also has a little orange zest mixed in, a great idea that I stole from Rick Bayless. Why a génoise for a Latin American cake? First, because spongecake is Latin American (by way of Europe, of course). […]
READ ONI’ve received several emails criticizing my planned addition of dulce de leche to tres leches cake. A few folks writing in from Mexico are telling me that it’s an “American thing.” That’s a valid criticism, since from what I’ve learned dulce de leche-tinged tres leches cakes first became popular in south Texas and Miami. Yet […]
READ ONReader Donna writes: Is dulce de leche a strictly New World food? I swear I ate something just like it in France when I was a student there in the 90’s. There is in fact a very similar preparation that’s made in Normandy. It’s called confiture de lait, essentially “milk preserves.” Thanks for the email, […]
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