cream – The At Home Cook

Classic Tres Leches

Hoping all you amazing mommas had a very happy Mother’s Day today! We had a blast! Luke was actually scheduled to be working today, but last minute, he was able to arrange having the day off… so glad he did!

We started the morning off by going to my mother in laws! She just had a knee replacement, so she wasn’t able to get out and about with the festivities at my moms house today. I took her a plate of some yummy butter pecan cookies! I will be posting those as well this evening…

After our brunch with her, we went over to my moms house, which is just down the street and we had a pool day! It was so much fun, but it was really hot and now I’m pretty drained from the day.

Anyway, so my grandma had a really rough year this year, medically, so we were especially grateful that we were able to celebrate another mother’s day with her! So this post is dedicated to her! It was her request that I make her a tres leches cake for Mother’s Day! This also happens to be Luke’s favorite cake on earth!

I have had many versions of this cake! Personally, I do not prefer the cake to be completely soggy because it kind of grosses me out lol, but I like for the bottom half of the cake to be moist and the top half to be a normal consistency! I made two of these cakes last night so I could try to get my measurements right…

Adding extra baking powder helps with this… Naturally all the milks you add to the cake sink down and settle at the bottom of the cake, so adding a bit more of baking powder will help your cake rise higher. This also helps with the cake not being too sweet. Sweetened condensed milk is like ultra sweet!!!

Also, my grandma was really tired today and she ended up falling asleep on the recliner during our lunch. When my grandpa asked if she wanted to go home, she said “give me my cake first! I want cake!” Lol.

This is a real simple recipe that is very enjoyable! I hope you enjoy it too.

Serving size: 12
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 25 minutes
Cake sets in refrigerator over
night

Ingredients:

For the cake

- 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tbs baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt 
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 tsp vanilla 
- 1/2 cup milk

For the 3 milk mixture 
- 12 ounce can of evaporated 
  milk
- 14 ounce can sweetened 
  condensed milk
- 1 1/2 cup heavy cream

For the whip topping

- 1 pint heavy whipping cream
- 1/2 - 3/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp vanilla
- strawberries for garnish

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a 9x 13 inch baking dish.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Whisk together and set aside. In a large bowl beat the eggs and sugar together. Add in the vanilla, mix and set aside. Pour half of the flour mixture into the egg mixture, incorporate together, then pour the milk into the bowl, then the remaining flour mixture.

Once all combined pour the batter into the greased baking dish and bake 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clear.

Let the cake cool completely. In a medium bowl, combine the cream, evaporated milk and condensed milk. Whisk the milks together until combined. Take a toothpick and poke holes all over the entire cake. Next take the milks and pour over the cake. Cover and set in the refrigerator 8 hours or overnight.

For the whip topping, take your cream and pour into a large cold glass bowl. Mix with an electric mixer on high speed until the cream thickens into whipped topping consistency. Slowly incorporate the powdered sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Spread the topping evenly over the cake and garnish with strawberries before serving.

Strawberry & Cream Scones

Okay y’all, let it be known that I absolutely love scones!! I’m so excited to share this post because these little treats are freaking delicious and they don’t really take a lot of effort!

So today my sister in law and my baby nephew were going to come spend the afternoon with GM and I. I told her I was going to bake something for her and asked her if she was a fan of scones! She said she had never had them before. I figured I’d make them anyway and just hope she would like them!!

I’m a big coffee drinker, so eating scones with a cup of coffee makes for the PERFECT breakfast, for me anyway!! They are typically not too sweet, but my SIL is not a coffee drinker, so I decided these would have to be a tad sweeter than normal because she wasn’t going to be enjoying them with a cup of coffee! So I added a sugary glaze over the top of these that did just the trick! OMG y’all, I’m obsessed with this recipe. I want it printed out on my fridge and I want someone to make these for me, fresh every morning.

I still had some leftover strawberries my grandfather had planted and for this recipe, I only used about a cup of fresh berries, which was perfect! When you take a bite of the crumbly bread, you get pops of fresh strawberry and the sweet glazed icing really just tied it all in together for me! Between my SIL, husband, granny and myself, these little babies were knocked out pretty quick. Seriously they are so good!

No lie, it probably took me 10 minutes to prep these! They were in the oven for about 20 minutes or so, so overall almost 30 minutes of time spent. Not bad, not bad! I want to make blueberry ones next, maybe with a lemon sugar glaze? Let me know if that sounds like a good idea.

Don’t be intimidated by making these! I would say its totally level “easy” in the baking department. Any non baker can pull these together!

I hope you enjoy 🙂

Ingredients:

For the bread

- 2 1/2 cups of flour
- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda 
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 stick unsalted butter (very cold)
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 2 tbs heavy whipping cream
- 1 cup strawberries

For the egg wash

- 1 egg beaten 
- 1 tsp heavy cream

For the glaze

- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- splash of vanilla
- pinch of salt

Instructions:

Bring your oven to 400 degrees. In the time it takes you to do the next steps, take your stick of butter and put it in the freezer to get it really cold. Cover a large baking sheet with parchment paper then set aside. In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, combine all the wet ingredients. Now it’s time to take the butter out of the freezer and cube into small pieces. Once the butter has been cut, place it into the bowl of dry ingredients and use your fingers to combine it. It will be very crumbly/floury and look like a mess. If it’s messy, don’t panic, you’re doing it right.

Take your bowl of wet ingredients and add into the bowl of dry ingredients/butter. Use fingers to combine the dough together, it should still be lumpy. Take your cut up strawberries and fold into the doughy mixture!

On a clean work surface, cover with a large amount of flour, so you can knead your dough without it sticking. Before kneading, this is what your dough mixture will look like. Reference photo below.

Now, you will use both of your hands to form the dough into the work surface to incorporate the ingredients and to shape the dough into a circle with about an 8-9 inch diameter. See photo below for reference.

I continuously added flour as I was shaping my dough, because it was getting a little sticky. If that happens, just toss a little flour over the sticky spots and it will help you form the shape. Once your dough is in a circle, slice in 8 even pieces and place on the baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Take your egg and cream, beat together in a small bowl, and coat a small amount over each pastry. (I used a cooking brush my husband uses to coat BBQ sauce on his food with.) Place in the oven for about 20 minutes or until a beautiful golden brown color is on top of the scones.

While the scones cool, in a medium bowl combine the cream, powdered sugar, salt and vanilla. If the mixture is too runny, add a bit more of sugar, if it is too thick, you can thin it down with more cream. Lightly drizzle the pastries with the glaze. Let stand for a few minutes and they are ready to serve! Thank you for reading!

Poteet Strawberry Cheesecake with Chocolate Drizzle

I had asked some of my friends on social media the other day what kind of recipes they would like me to share on the blog and cheesecake was one of the few requested! I’m not much of a cheesecake fan myself, and I’ve actually never made one, so I was nervous and excited to try and pull this off.

Also a couple days ago, my aunt had come by with a pint of fresh “Poteet” strawberries that my grandpa had planted. I knew I was going to top them onto the cheesecake. I think I was more excited to eat the strawberries than the cheesecake honestly lol. If you’ve never had Poteet strawberries you are missing out. They are so sweet and juicy!!! In a couple of weeks, the city of Poteet throws a large festival called the Strawberry Festival, and it’s kind of a big deal around here. The food is the best part, you can find strawberry nachos, strawberry funnel cakes, margaritas, ice cream, wine, etc. just to name a few!

They don’t only have strawberry food items though, there’s also a lot of really really really good Mexican food, fried foods, turkey legs… omg I’m getting hungry thinking about it.

So like I said I knew I was going to top the cheesecake with these strawberries, but I didn’t know how. I was torn between making a sauce to go over it, like a classic strawberry cheesecake or by topping the fresh berries over the cake and drizzling chocolate over them. I went ahead and let my friends on Instagram decide. Thank you to everyone who voted and helped me decide which way it was going to go!

For the crust:

- 1 to 1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs 
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon 
- 6 tablespoons melted unsalted butter

For the cake:

- 4 eight oz packages of cream cheese (full fat)
- 1 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- lemon juice from half of a lemon
- 3 tablespoons flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 4 eggs
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/4 cup heavy cream

For the topping

- 1 pint fresh strawberries
- 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
- 1 tbs heavy cream

Instructions:

Set your oven to 350 degrees then start assembling the pie crust. Take a 9 or 10 inch springform pan and coat the inside with butter. In a food processor, pulse the graham cracker cookies till you make about 1 1/2 cup of crumbs. In a small-medium bowl mix in cookie crumbs with cinnamon. Pour in melted butter and combine with fingers. You should be able to form a soft clump if you squeeze the mixture with your hands. If your crumbs are too crumbly and won’t stick, add tad of water to the mixture until it starts to hold.

Pour the crumb mixture into the bottom of the springform pan. Take two fingers and pinch the crumbs down to the bottom of the pan until the crumbs form an even crust. Now take two pieces of foil and cover the bottom of the springform pan forming the foil up around the edges of the bowl, like pictured below, this is because later when we bake the cake, we submerge the pan in a water bath, and the foil is to protect from water seeping into the pan while it cooks. You will need a large baking dish that the springform pan can fit inside.

Cook the crust in the oven for 8-10 minutes.

While the crust is baking, take a medium size bowl and begin whipping the cream cheese in a mixer. Once the cream cheese is creamy in consistency, add the vanilla and lemon juice.

In a separate bowl combine the flour, sugar and salt. Slowly combine the dry ingredients into the cream cheese mixture. Next, add your eggs and egg yolk, one by one making sure that each egg is thoroughly integrated into the cream cheese mixture.

Now take the mixture and pour evenly into the pan. Take your springform pan and set into the baking dish. Next you will take a few cups of boiling water and pour into the large pan, about an inch of the way up to the springform pan. This method somewhat steams the cake while it bakes. Now, carefully place the baking dish into the oven and bake for about an hour (could go up to one half hour depending on your oven). I had to go an extra twenty minutes or so, giving the total baking time about 80 minutes.

You’ll know when the cake is done because the outer 2-3 inches of the cake will puff up and be firm. The inside circle of the cake will slightly wiggle like jello if you gently shake the pan, that is normal.

When your cake is done, turn off the heat and crack open the oven door slightly, and allow the cake to cool up to one hour in the oven.

After one hour, take a slender knife and make sure the outside of the cake isn’t sticking to the pan. That can cause the top layer of the cake to crackle. Allow to cool on a wire rack. Once the cake is completely cool, refrigerate for several hours.

Once cake has chilled in fridge at least 3-4 hours, it is ready to serve.

Before serving, cup up the pint of strawberries into slices. Arrange berries over the top of the cake. In a small microwavable bowl, heat the chocolate chips and cream. Drizzle chocolate all over the top of the berries. Slice your cake and it is ready to serve!