Week Twenty - Tres Leches Cake

Boy oh boy...what a back injury and a heat wave can do to your desire to make ice cream! Here's a post from a May flavor:

For Mother's Day, I wanted to make something I knew Proud Mary (my mom!) would love to eat. This would be tricky, however, considering the woman eats like a bird. A bird who doesn't like sweets. But if there is one dessert my mom cannot pass up, it's a piece of tres leches cake! Each month, she and her lady friends from the office go out for their night on the town, agreeing on a restaurant and having a real wine and gossip fest. It seems like every other time I hear about this event, they're ending up at one of two restaurants that serve tapas-style food and they're always sharing a piece of tres leches cake for dessert. I will say here and now that if I am sharing one piece of cake with three or four women at any point in my life, I sure hope that piece of cake is the size of a microwave. But I digress...

Back to tres leches cake. This tasty treat is typically a sponge cake (or in this case, Entenmann's Butter Loaf) soaked with three different types of milk, or tres leches: condensed milk, evaporated milk, and heavy cream. (I believe it can vary, but that's the recipe I went with.) Done right, it's a moist and delicious treat! In making the ice cream version, I decided to cube up some cake (enter the Entenmann's) and soak it, then layer that into the finished ice cream base. The results were pretty delicious, if I do say so myself! And I'm pretty sure Proud Mary agrees...

Tres Leches Cake Ice Cream

 
Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup evaporated milk
1 cup sugar
6 egg yolks
3 cups cubed cake, soaked in mixture of 1/4 cup heavy cream, 1/8 cup sweetened condensed milk, and 1/8 cup evaporated milk

1. Pour the milk, heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk into a saucepan and heat over medium high until bubbles start to form around the edge.

2. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks and sugar and whisk to combine.

3. Add a small amount of the hot milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Once combined, slowly pour egg mixture into the milk mixture, whisking constantly to avoid curdling. Continue to cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon.

4. Pour through a sieve into a clean bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing it down directly on top of the mixture. Refrigerate until completely cooled.

5. Transfer cooled mixture into bowl of ice cream maker and churn. Just before the end, add the cake and churn until incorporated. Pour into a freezer-safe container.

6. Grab some friends and some spoons and dig in!