The Creative Academy wrapped up its summer series of cooking classes taught by Deer Valley Resort’s team of culinary experts. The most recent chunk heavily featured fan-favorites from their pastry chefs: carrot cake, chocolate chip cookies, devil’s food cake and tres leches cake.
Chef Jhonatan Noguera, a pastry chef at Silver Lake Lodge, taught the Tres Leches class, drawing from more than just his professional knowledge: his personal experience growing up in Yucatan, Mexico.
“Today, my job will be teaching you how to make the emblematic cake from Latin America,” he said. “This cake is fairly famous, at least in the south of Mexico. Why? Because you just have four ingredients: it’s just eggs, sugar, flour and vanilla. That’s it.”
The dessert, made by pouring a mix of three types of milk — evaporated milk, condensed milk and whole milk — over a spongy cake, and topped with whipped cream, has many different versions based on the country of origin, Noguera explained.
“Everyone in Latin America has their own version. Some of them put alcohol in the mix of the tres leches. Some of them use a different cake,” he said.
Some places top the cake with pastry cream and chantilly cream, which is made with heavy cream, powdered sugar and vanilla, while others top it with Swiss meringue, made by whipping sugar and egg whites.
For the class, he taught the Mexican version, which starts with making the cake.
While the hour-and-a-half long class wasn’t enough time to have each person make the cake from scratch, Noguera called on volunteers to demonstrate the main steps.
For the cake, the key to its airy texture is through first whipping the egg whites, then carefully mixing the other ingredients without deflating or losing the air.
The pastry cream — made with egg yolks, milk and heavy cream, sugar, vanilla and corn starch — involved baking techniques of tempering, said Noguera. After heating the milk, the process of tempering would introduce the hot liquid slowly into the whipped egg yolks to avoid scrambling or cooking them. Then cooked over heat, it thickens to a yellow cream from the corn starch.
Swiss meringue is one of the three types of meringue, Noguera said, which are Swiss, Italian and French. The Swiss style heats egg whites and sugar in a bowl over a boiling pot of water, a technique called a bain-marie, then adds cream of tartar and vanilla and uses a stand mixer to whip until thick. Then, it can be pipped and will harden, holding its shape.
Noguera demonstrated each step, having volunteer attendees try techniques hands-on. The key to working with these ingredients is confidence, he said.
“In your mind, you’re thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t want to mess it up.’ And then you go slow. When you do that, there’s two things that can happen. You can mess it up, and then you can take longer to do it,” he said, and the room laughed. “So don’t be afraid to do it.”
After showing each recipe, Noguera’s assistants passed out pre-prepared ingredients for attendees to use and assemble their own cake to take home.
First, scraping the caramelized layer off the cake so it can absorb the milks. Then, the tres leches mix — four milks in this case with the addition of heavy cream — poured over the baked and cooled cake. Next, pipe the pastry cream over the top and spread with an offset spatula. And last, a layer of Chantilly cream to top it off.
Noguera brought out pre-made cakes for people to try both Swiss meringue and Chantilly cream styles, his favorite the meringue, having grown up with that version in Mexico.
“In Mexico, we use meringue. Why? The sun where I am from is pretty hot and humid. If we use Chantilly cream, it’s going to melt,” he said. Plus, heavy cream is expensive, but the base of the meringue, eggs, are more common.
Deer Valley’s Creative Academy offers classes throughout the year with topics that range from cakes and cookies to barbecue, salads, mixed drinks and cuisine from around the world. Visit deervalley.com/things-to-do/activities/creative-academy to learn more and stay tuned for their next round of fall-time classes to be announced soon.