Chocolate Tres Leches Cake

This easy chocolate tres leches cake recipe is chocolatey, soft, and a great dessert to serve at parties. Step by step photos teach you how to bake this chocolate lover's cake!

My family loves tres leches cake. My sister goes die-hard for this salted caramel tres leches cake recipe and I love my Baileys tres leches cake. I wanted to make a chocolate version. This is somewhat reminiscent of better than sex cake, that's a super easy recipe that starts with a boxed cake mix.

Because chocolate cake is generally a lot less fussy compared to a white or yellow cake I didn't bother with a recipe that included folding whipped egg whites into the batter. I just made a simple, delicious chocolate sponge cake.

To ensure we had ultimate chocolate flavor you'll find the chocolate in all three parts of the cake; a chocolate cake, chocolate milk in the soak, and freshly shaved chocolate on top of the whipped cream.

Ingredients

There are three components to this cake; cake, soak and topping.

For the cake you'll need:

• Cake Flour. Cake flour is a finer, softer flour compared to all-purpose flour.
• Dutch Process Unsweetened Cocoa Powder. This recipe was formulated for Dutch-process, you can not easily use natural cocoa powder instead. Dutch-process cocoa has a much smoother chocolate flavor.
• Baking Powder. This chemical leavening agent is already activated to help the cake rise while baking.
• Baking Soda. This chemical leavening agent needs to be activated and is by the acidity in the buttermilk.
• Salt. Just a bit is needed, don't skip it!
• Salted Butter. Just good old melted butter is all you need here. You could use unsalted if you wanted.
• Granulated Sugar. Make sure you measure properly, I much prefer a scale!
• Large Eggs. In order for your eggs to be easily and fully incorporated into the batter, you need them to be at room temperature.
• Buttermilk. This needs to be at room temperature,
• Pure Vanilla Extract. Vanilla pairs beautifully with the flavors of chocolate.
• Hot Coffee. Adding coffee helps intensify the chocolate flavor, your cake will not taste like coffee, trust me!

For the three milk soak you'll need:

• Chocolate Milk. To go along with the chocolate theme I swapped out the traditional whole milk for chocolate milk.
• Sweetened Condensed Milk. This is liquid gold, I always lick the spoon with this stuff!!
• Evaporated Milk. Sometimes known as unsweetened condensed milk, this milk has had a large portion of the water evaporated to create concentrated milk.

And for the whipped cream topping you'll need:

• Heavy Whipping Cream. Make sure you use heavy whipping cream.
• Confectioner's Sugar. You just need a bit to sweeten the whipped cream.
• Chocolate or Chocolate Curls. While I just grated some chocolate for the photos, using chocolate curls would be beautiful.

For ingredient quantities please reference the recipe card below. On the recipe card there is a button for US or M (Metric) measurements.

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C and grease a 9-inch by 9-inch square baking pan.

Place a fine-mesh sieve over a large bowl and sift together the cake flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Once fully combined set aside.

In a large bowl whisk together the melted butter, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.

Pour in the hot coffee and mix until combined, the batter will be thin.

Pour cake batter into the prepared pan and bake for 32-37 minutes, or until done. If you stick a toothpick in it should come out clean. Let the cake cool completely.

Using a fork poke the cake numerous times, the more holes the better! In a large bowl combine the chocolate milk, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk. Pour the milk mixture all over the cake. Pour slowly, some liquid will pool but most will be absorbed into the cake. Let sit for 30 minutes covered in the refrigerator.

Then in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment or a large bowl with a handheld electric whisk beat heavy cream and sugar until medium-thick stiff peaks are formed.

Spread on top of the cake and garnish with chocolate. You can get fancy and make homemade chocolate curls or do like I did and use a Microplane zester to create chocolate shavings. 

Keep refrigerated for at least 3-4 hours before serving, the more time the milk has to soak in the better. Store leftovers in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Frequently Asked Questions

More chocolate cakes

• This strawberries and cream chocolate cake is a reader favorite.
• For a fun easy cake try this chocolate dump cake.
• If you are serving a gluten-free friend or just want to try a different style of cake check out this flourless chocolate cake recipe.

★★★★★ Please let me know if you make this recipe by leaving a star rating and comment below!

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