Eggnog Tres Leches Cake

The perfect make-ahead cake soaked with a boozy eggnog syrup.

One of my all-time favorite cakes is a tres leches cake— a beautiful, very light and airy cake completely submerged in a mixture of milks. It’s perfectly sweet, so satisfying, and it’s a recipe you can come back to again and again. It doesn’t hurt that it’s crowned with a beautiful mountain of whipped cream, one of my all-time favorite things to eat. I’ve made all types of tres leches—classic, coconut, peanut butter, dulce de leche—but how can I leave out eggnog?? And I’ll tell you what, it’s perfect.

Traditionally in Mexico, you can often have a tres leches cake with a beautiful rum flavoring in the milky syrup mixture. This gives you a lovely depth of flavor like super-charged vanilla, plus a little bit of a boozy kick, which I often appreciate in a dessert. In this recipe, we are using some store-bought eggnog in the syrup and the cake for even more flavor and richness, and a (generous) pour of rum in the syrup for that boozy cocktail flavor.

One thing that I love about tres leches cake is that you can make it a day or two ahead (and you really should). It actually gets better with time as the flavors come together and the cake softens up in the fridge.

During the holidays, I’m quite busy, and it can be tempting to be overambitious, but make-ahead desserts like this really help you out when you’re hosting because you can front-load the work. Then, when it comes time to host (or even arrive as a guest if you are bringing a dessert), you’ll have done the work well ahead of time, which means that you’re less stressed the day of.

I hope you get to make this recipe, and if there is a tres leches variation that you would like to see, please let me know by leaving a comment. I’m always happy to try new things!