plate 29: nicaragua

You might find a few more desserts gracing the pages of Destination Degustation over the next little while. You see, I've caught the baking bug. Baking isn't something I do often and I'm really not sure why. It's pretty obvious that I like food in any form, but if given the choice I'd choose sweet over savoury, and who can't be captivated by those fantastic smells that emanate from the oven as your mixture turns into masterpiece (or so you hope)?

To feed my baking craving, I headed to the Central American country of Nicaragua (trivia nerds note: bordered by Honduras and Costa Rica, capital Managua, flag below). If you haven't heard of Nicaragua before, well, now you have, but if you have mates who don't know of it, I suggest you educate them via the country's most famous cake: Pastel de Tres Leches, or Three-Milks Cake. Many Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Mexico and Cuba, may claim the cake as their own, but history says otherwise.

But let's move from classroom to kitchen. Baking invariably means egg separating - a skill that I've been getting better and better at after all these weeks, finally - and this cake required five eggs to be separated. Five whites, which needed some serious beating. After a few minutes I was already exhausted, but the beat gradually became therapeutic. It was like a massage being applied too hard - a slightly painful process that would all be worth it in the end.

And I was right. Half an hour later, sporting what felt like Popeye's right arm, I got the whites to the desired snow-white and glossy, firm-peaked stage. Having learned my lesson from French week when I made a souffle, I very carefully folded them into the yolk mixture and smoothed them into the pan.

The cake itself is pretty simple and only takes about 40 minutes in the oven, but what makes it so ridiculously special is the triple-milk syrup that's poured over the top. Once I'd let the cake cool, it was ready to be filled with the wondrous combination of evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, cream, vanilla essence and a splash of rum.

To fill the cake, poke lots of little holes all over it and slowly, very slowly, pour the milk mixture over it, letting it soak into the cake. Waiting for it to soak through is slightly time-consuming, especially as it seems like there's a helluva lot of mixture, but you need it to get the perfect result.

Because of all that mixture I was concerned the cake would be super soggy and hard to cut, but surprisingly when the time came to slide the knife through, it sliced just fine. I was able to produce lovely little squares that were ready to be topped with yet another milky substance - whipped cream with a touch of sugar - and slices of canned mango.

Oh. My. God. Incredible. Five stars. Although the texture is fairly wet because of the syrup, overall the cake is soft and lusciously sweet. And, you know something's pretty great when you're thinking about eating a second slice before you've even finished your first.