Not all tres leches cakes are created equal. Some are more cakey, some are more bread pudding-y, and some are just like a dairy filled-sponge.
A very fine specimen, however, can be found at San Francisco's DeLessio Bakery, part of (a significant part of, that is) a gourmet grocery store. A beautiful array of sweets will greet you—cookies, scones, breakfast treats, and the like—but it was the Tres Leches that caught my eye. I am used to seeing it served kind of like a pudding, but this was firmly in cake territory, and were very prettily decorated.
It's a cake with a nice pedigree, too, per the bakery's description:
We soak our very best yellow cake with a sweet-creamy mixture made with Straus Family cream, flavored with Tahitian vanilla bean and dark rum. Toasted meringue, made with Organic Valley eggs, is the finishing touch.
Nom! A sample was given, and the cake was thick and creamy with all of the various types of dairy included, but still very much retained the character of a cake—it wasn't one of those “what is this exactly” types of dessert experiences.
It is my firm belief that when something is done well it can make you a believer in that genre of dessert, and this might be the tres leches that made cakespy a believer.
Tres Leches Cake, DeLessio Market and Bakery, San Francisco. Online here.