Back at it again with another matcha and tres leches dessert! Tres leches has honestly become one of my favorite desserts to make. It’s so easy, it always turns out good, and there are endless variations I still want to try. This one was extra special because it was for my friend Erick’s birthday. The first time I ever made tres leches, he told me he wanted one for his birthday, so here it is! I originally planned to make an Oreo version, but matcha and strawberry just sounded too good to pass up. Plus, I’ve been on a matcha baking streak lately. The matcha I used was from a big $25 tub I bought on Amazon. It’s not ceremonial grade, just regular matcha, but it still gets the job done. The color was definitely darker and the taste a bit milder, but I didn’t mind. I noticed in some recipes that they use ceremonial matcha, which explains why my cake turned out darker than the ones in the pictures. Ceremonial matcha can cost around $40 for a small tub — it’s worth it if you’re a big matcha drinker since café drinks can run $6–$10 each — but for baking, I’ll stick to the budget kind for now. I did over bake this one a bit (classic me). I poked the cake with a fork and saw some residue come off, so I left it in for another eight minutes — and it came out perfect! But then I made the mistake of leaving it in the oven to cool down, which caused it to keep baking and end up a little overcooked. Luckily, it’s tres leches, so the milk mixture saves everything from being dry. When it came time to decorate, I tried to do the powdered matcha design on top, but there was a big clump. When I tried scooping it off, it made the cake look worse, so I just mixed the matcha powder into the whipped cream and that actually helped. You can kind of see it in the third photo, before I added the strawberries. Once I started decorating with strawberries, though… it looked so ugly. I hated it. My boyfriend took one look and said I should’ve cut the strawberries into smaller chunks. He was totally right. It would’ve looked way better. At least it still tasted delicious! The recipe I used was for the matcha cake itself, and for the milk mixture I just combined the usual three milks with a little red food coloring for a soft tint. You can slightly see it in the picture where I added the matcha powder on top. Overall, I give this recipe 5 out of 5 cactuses. It was easy to make, simple to follow, and most importantly, Erick really liked it, which is all that matters since it was for him.