Trilece / Tri Leche

Albania is known for it’s honey or sugar soaked desserts and this Albanian three milk cake is a very welcoming difference. Soft, sweet and milky, refreshing all year round. I enjoy making it, although this Albanian dessert recipe can be really challenging to prepare. If you follow my step by step guides and be patient about the caramel, the outcome is delightful. It is a traditional Albanian dessert that has spread all over Europe, celebrity chefs are releasing their own versions of it and I’ve often heard it being reference to ‘a Balkan cake of mystery’. At a guess this is due to the different combinations of milk that can be used and the real unknown certainty of where the dessert recipe really did originate from. After being taken from Albania to Turkey it became a popular dessert in Turkey and Istanbul with a big craze picking back up for it in 2014, all restaurants and cafes had it on offer. The traditional recipe for the Albanian Trilece dessert goes back as far as the Ottaman era, if not further and was made with three milks: Goats milk, Cow’s milk and Buffalo milk. Today, the three milk cake recipe is more commonly a mixture of cow’s milk and cream. My recipe uses two milks and a cream, back in Albania we make our own cream which is just as nice!