Happy Birthday Mama!

Mom's birthday is today, but we celebrated on Saturday. Good thing because she, dad and Frank are all sick today. My sister in law and niece came in on Friday to surprise mom for her birthday and I'm sure that is the best gift she could have gotten. We were all thrilled to see them!

Frank and I were in charge of the birthday dinner of Paella, Sangria and Tres Leches cake. Everything turned out great, but for now I'm going to share the cake details and recipe. Ever since Frank got me the My Sweet Mexico cookbook for my birthday I have been wanting to try the Tres Leches cake recipe. It is reprinted on Bon Apetit's website here, so you can try it too. I haven't eaten too many versions of Tres Leches, but knew that it could be heavy and overly sweet. The author mentions in this recipe that she designed this cake to avoid both of those problems. I had never baked a Tres Leches either, so this was a first. It is definitely a special ocassion cake with multiple steps, but very much worth the work.

The cake batter has an extra step of whipping the eggwhites, which helps to make the cake nice and airy and sponge like to soak up all the Tres Leches.

Even though the cake itself is not very sweet or flavorful, it came out of the oven smelling delicious! I couldn't tell from the photo in the book how big the cake would be, it bakes in one 8" round pan and you slice that into two layers. Since I was unsure and only had one 8" pan, I made a single batch and baked the cake to see how big it would be. I decided that I wanted to double the recipe and make a larger cake, so I baked another layer the next morning. I didn't double the Tres Leches part, and that was fine, it was still plenty moist. I did however double the whipped cream topping, and though there was extra, I don't think the single batch would have been quite enough.

Karlie loved the whipped topping!

One of my favorite parts was the layer of whipped cream with berries in the middle. I used strawberries and blackberries.

I'm glad I got to add another cake recipe to my baking repertoire. I'm so pleased that it turned out well and that everyone loved it. I will definitely be making this again in the future!

There are many things that I could share about my mom, but her creative talents, generosity and her support of my creative endeavors stand out above the rest.

Happy Birthday mama! I'm sorry you aren't feeling good today, and I'm glad that you got to celebrate over the weekend. I love you bunches, and am so lucky to have you as my mama.