A couple months ago while poking around the internet for Puerto Rican recipes (travel is inspiring!), I came across a recipe for a simple sweetened condensed milk cake. I made it once, just as the recipe said, dusting the top with powdered sugar and serving it with a lemon blueberry sauce (the recipe hadn’t said to do that, though) and whipped cream.

Since then, there have been a slew of variations:
*I’ve quadrupled the lime zest, and swapped out the lime juice for rum.
*I’ve poked holes all over the top of the baked cake and then doused it with a hot butter-and-rum sauce, spiked with lime.
*I’ve made it in layers, splitting each of the layers in half and filling with lemon curd. Then, between the two layers, a strawberry cream cheese filling (I think? There have been so many cakes, I’m having trouble remembering.) The sides and top I iced with a butter cream. That version went to our homeless shelter and was, I heard later, a smash hit, so…
*I made it again, this time icing it with some leftover cream cheese frosting, I think.
*Most recently, I’ve soaked the entire thing with the hot rum-lime sauce and then split it in half and filled with lemon curd and (leftover, curdled — what in the world?) creamy fluff frosting.

In other words, it’s high time I share the recipe!

Here, I’m giving the recipe to you straight. As written, it’s a deliciously simple yellow cake, less fluffy than some — I think it’s the condensed milk that gives it more heft — and with subtle hints of lime and nutmeg. From there, you can take it in any direction.

Caribbean Milk Cake
Adapted from Imma’s blog, Immaculate Bites.

The absence of salt is not a typo.

2½ sticks butter
¾ cup sugar
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
5 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon rum or lime juice
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1-2 teaspoons freshly ground nutmeg
4 tablespoons lime zest (about four limes)

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the condensed milk and beat well. Beat in the eggs, vanilla, and rum. Add the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and zest and stir until combined.

Pour the batter into a greased ten-inch springform pan and bake at 325 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Cool completely before dusting with powdered sugar and serving with whipped cream and berries.

Variations:
*For a layer cake, divide batter between three, greased and lined, 8-inch pans.
*Split layers and fill with lemon or lime curd.
*Pour a hot butter-rum sauce over the baked cake…

Butter Rum Sauce
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup rum
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup fresh lime juice, optional

Combine the butter, sugar, salt, and rum in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and gently boil the sauce for at least five minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla (and/or the lime juice).

Let the cake cool for ten minutes and then, using some sort of pokey thing, like the slender end of a chopstick, jab holes all over the cake, making sure to reach the bottom of the pan. Drizzle the sauce slowly over the cake, using a spoon or spatula to evenly distribute the sauce, if needed. Cool completely.

(Once when I was just dousing an 8-inch cake, I first flipped the cake out of the pan, poured some sauce into the bottom of the pan, and then returned the cake to the pan before poking the holes, effectively saturating the cake with flavor from both top and bottom.)

This same time, years previous: a trick for cooking pasta, the quotidian (4.4.16), cup cheese, chickpeas with spinach, spinach cheese crepes.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (4.3.17), red raspberry pie, sun days, working lunches, sore eye, the quotidian (4.2.12), three stories, now, oven fries.

Last week my husband and I zipped up to Pennsylvania (marveling all the while that our kids were old enough for us to leave them at home alone while we left the freakin’ STATE — wasn’t it just yesterday that we couldn’t step foot out of the house without a diaper bag?) to Mennonite Disaster Service’s binational office for a flurry of meetings.

We took a tour of the place, got introduced to a bunch of people whose names I’m still struggling to get straight, had a meeting with all the in-the-know people, ate lunch with the staff and then lingered at the table for another couple hours to dig into more of the gritty details of the Puerto Rico situation and ask all sorts of questions.

We left the office with a handful of jelly beans from the very large communal bowl, a map with all potential MDS locations starred in red, a variety of newsletters and pamphlets, a brand new t-shirt each, construction helmet keyfobs for the kids, and a whole lot of information buzzing around in our heads.

Before heading home, we stopped at Martin’s Pretzel Bakery (tradition!) and popped in to visit my grandparents and stock up on apples and cider at their local orchard.

Just a few days ago we received confirmation of our work assignment: we’ll be living in the southern coastal city of Ponce, the same place where my husband went in January. There we’ll be project directors, overseeing from start to finish the construction of the first of the 16 or so new houses, engineered to withstand both hurricanes and earthquakes (translation: lots of concrete), that MDS has promised to build. Along with supervising volunteers, managing officey stuff, and caring for kids, I’ll be blogging and maybe even doing a few stories for MDS. It will be a nice change from toiling away on the book.

In other news, MDS is working to find us a house (yay!), and we will have a six-passenger truck (they’re boating more vehicles down next month). We have a week off, halfway through our term. MDS offered to fly us home, but we declined: “I already know what it looks like here,” my husband said. We hope to hit up some beaches (besides the one that we’ll be living on, poor us) (also, taking suggestions!), and are hounding the children to hoard their pennies, constantly reminding them snorkeling and scuba diving aren’t cheap.

And we just found out that MDS will be sending my husband and me to their training for project directors that will be held in a couple weeks in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, yikes!

Apparently, this whole adventure is about to get for-real serious. Which is good, because I am so ready to get this show on the road.

P.S. MDS needs volunteers but there is a wait list for Puerto Rico (they cover volunteers’ living expenses and food, and they pay 200 dollars towards the plane ticket) so sign up now!

P.P.S. And if you want to help cover our at-home costs, you can support us here (click the line that says “Mennonite Disaster Services”), and thanks!

This same time, years previous: teff pancakes with blueberries, the day we did everything, the quotidian (3.28.16), absorbing the words, seven-minute egg, the quotidian (3.30.15), maple pecan scones, Good Friday fun, babies and boobs, braided bread.