Level Up Your Tres Leches Cake With Chocolate Milk

If you're a chocolate milk fan, you probably never tire of the sweet, cold liquid. While we can't argue with how delicious homemade or store-bought chocolate milk tastes, there are a few extra uses for it besides drinking it. One of the best uses is baking, specifically as one of the milks in tres leches cake. Tres leches, which translates to "three milks" in Spanish, is traditionally soaked in a combination of whole milk, condensed milk, and evaporated milk. The dessert, which is similar in texture to angel food cake, is made sweeter thanks to the milk mixture that is poured over top and seeps into the cake.

Yes, chocolate lovers, you can indeed use chocolate milk when making tres leches cake. You could use it instead of whole milk, or you could add some cocoa powder to the three-milk soak, ensuring the chocolate flavors all the milk varieties equally. If that's still not enough for you, you can even make a chocolate cake as the base by adding cocoa powder to the dry mix of the cake. Tres leches cake is already known to be on the sweeter side, so be prepared that adding chocolate milk will make this treat even sweeter.

Variations on tres leches cake

Chocolate milk tres leches are just the beginning of all the unique ways to customize your cake. If chocolate is your love language, you can turn your chocolate milk tres leches cake into a Mexican hot chocolate cake — all you need is cayenne pepper and cinnamon for a spicy kick. If you're feeling festive, adding a little peppermint extract to the chocolate milk can give your chocolate tres leches a Christmassy vibe. A piece of cake should never be enjoyed solo, so you might as well pour yourself a tall glass of chocolate milk to enjoy on the side.

You can even experiment with texture by adding cereal like Fruity Pebbles to your tres leches cake. The cereal not only adds texture to the very soft and moist cake, it also adds a unique flavor. For those who are cutting back on dairy, there are still ways to enjoy a tres leches cake sans leche. You can use non-dairy milk, such as oat milk, coconut condensed milk, and almond milk. Since the three milks work just like regular dairy milk, you could easily use chocolate almond or oat milk for an extra chocolatey flavor.