tres leches caketres leches cake, or torta de tres leches (from Spanish, “three milks cake”), is basically a sponge cake soaked in three kinds of milk: evaporated milk, condensed milk, and heavy cream.The tres leches cake  is  very popular  in many parts of Central and South America.It is sometimes featured in cinco de Mayo celebrations. For this month it was our daring bakers challenge to make one.

The tres leches cake is super moist and decadent -as you might expect- but what is surprising is that it is not soggy. When you make the cake and pour the three milk mixture on it you will think “this is going to end in a disaster, there is no way that this little cake will absorb all this liquid” but it will!The cake’s ability to absorb all that liquid  is due to the fact that the tres leches cake is made of a sponge cake base,  sponge cakes as the name implies are full of bubbles. This distinct texture is why the tres leches is moist but not soggy

How to make the perfect cup of coffee with a french press

My relationship with coffee is complicated and hard to explain!

I love the smell of coffee, love iced coffee and frappuccino but won’t go near hot coffee! Why am I writing  a post about coffee then? Well that is meant to say that even if you are not a coffee person, there are so many other ways to enjoy coffee, especially good quality coffee.

Before we can get to the different ways to enjoy coffee, I thought it would be best to start with the way to make the perfect cup of coffee. Once you have made your coffee to perfection there is a world of options on how to enjoy it. One of my favorites is coming in an upcoming post

iced coffee

gnocchi

If you are passionate about food and have a sense of adventure, I am sure you have a “recipes I want to try” list. If you are passionate about food, have a sense of humor and you are a food blogger then that list must be a mile long, at least, and it keeps growing with every new blog you follow and every cook book you add to your collection.

If you were to read my list , you’d find that Gnocchi has been there for quite sometime. I wanted to give it a go so many times but somehow I never got around to it. That is why I was super excited when this month’s daring cooks challenge was announced. The challenge was to make potato gnocchi from scratch!

Gnocchi if you have never tried it before are Italian dumplings made of potatoes, flour and occasionally eggs. You can think of them as potatoes meet pasta to yield light and fluffy pillows that are simply irresistable .

Chicken biryani, indian recipe

This month’s daring cooks challenge was about Biryani. Biryani is a rice-based dish made with spices, rice (usually basmati) and chicken, mutton, fish, eggs, or vegetables.The name is derived from the Persian word beryān which means “fried” or “roasted”.

Grace, one of our talented non-blogging Daring Kitchen members, was our Daring Cooks’ August hostess who shared with us some of her family’s tried and true Bengali Biryani recipes – all of them delicious and all of them prepared fresh from our own kitchens!

Chicken Biryani, easy with step by step instructions

This was my second time making Biryani and my first time making chicken biryani (the first was meat biryani). In my first attempt I used a ready made biryani spice mix that turned out to be too spicy. We couldn’t even finish the meal. This time around I was determined to make a biryani the entire family would enjoy. For guidance I used the challenge recipe, my friend Manu’s Hyderabadi chicken recipe and my friend Suhad’s biryani recipe. The aroma of the herbs and spices made everyone hungry as the biryani was cooking. We all had great expectations for this chicken biryani and it did not disappoint, even my four year old son enjoyed it immensely .