Tres Leches Cake with a twist

I discovered Tres Leches cake right before I had to go gluten-free. I'm not much of a cake eater, but Tres Leches cake is the bomb. For the uninitiated, Tres Leches means "three milks" and the cake version is a cake upon which three kinds of milk has been poured and allowed to sit. Then it's "frosted" with whipped cream. NOT the stuff out of a can, but real whipped cream.

March is National Chocolate Lovers Month, and the seniors love it when we do activities that involve food, so just for kicks I decided to incorporate Tres Leches cake into our chocolate celebration by using a chocolate cake for the base. And, since I'd had a gluten free Tres Leches cake on the "to experiment with" list for some time now, I decided our chocolate celebration was the perfect opportunity to make a gluten free chocolate Tres Leches cake. With 25 people to eat it, it insured I wouldn't have tons of leftover cake hanging around just waiting to be eaten.

I found a gluten free Tres Leches cake recipe on the internet. Quite simple, actually. You bake a gluten free cake, then mix 1 can evaporated milk, 1 can of sweetened condensed milk and 1/2 cup of heavy cream together, then pour over a cooled sheet cake, into which you have poked holes with a fork. Then you let it sit for 30 minutes to soak up the liquid before frosting it with the freshly made whipped cream. Gluten free cake being dry as dust by nature, the soaking in milk prior to serving is actually a huge improvement. I used Betty Crocker, since that is what Publix had, but I think any gluten free cake will work. The edges can be problematic, just because it's hard to get liquid to "stick" to the vertical sides of the cake. But not wanting dry edges, I just kept scooping up the stuff from the bottom of the plate and pouring it back over the sides. And made sure that there were plenty of fork holes in the sides.

The verdict: hands down, it was the best gluten free cake I've eaten, not that I've eaten many. However, what clinched it was that I served this cake to 28 gluten-eating people who never knew it wasn't regular cake. They liked it so much that several of them asked for seconds.

Oh, and it was even better the second day.

NOT QUITE A CUPCAKE...

My sister, the Cupcake Addict, makes some interesting cupcakes. One evening, she was making a pesto cupcake, which didn't sound like a cupcake flavor and she said it was a savory cupcake.

Since I first used Bob's Red Mill gluten free cornbread mix, I've thought it was more like a cake with cornmeal added. It doesn't have a whole lot of cornmeal in it, so it's not what a southern girl like me would call cornbread. The finished cornbread is fairly thick, kind of on the sweet side, and has the texture of cake. After a couple of brainstorm emails with Loztnausten, in which I tossed around the idea of using the BRM mix as a base for creativity, I took the plunge last night.

The idea had been churning to swirl pesto through muffins made with the BRM mix. That seemed like it would mix well with parmesan cheese and sundried tomatoes. I couldn't find my sundried tomatoes, but I did have some sundried tomato tapenade in the pantry, so figured I'd give that a whirl.

First off, I used buttermilk instead of the regular milk the mix called for, just because I had it in the fridge and wanted to use it up. Then, because I don't have a clue about the chemistry of baking, I measured the other things by "look" as opposed to any real measurement. I added about three heaping spoonfuls of homemade pesto, grated in about 1/2 cup of asaigo cheese, and put in several spoonfuls of the sundried tomato tapenade. Into muffin pans it went, and then into the oven.

The batter made 18 muffins. I filled my silicone pan, then pulled out the cast iron muffin pan, lined with cupcake cups for the rest. The finished product was quite tasty, and is pictured at the top.