Today was a busy day! So without further ado, a short stage summary followed by today’s dish.

Cycling 101

For those that are new to bike racing there are two main categories of races: one-day races and stage races which have multiple days of racing. One-day races have one winner, the first person across the finish line. For stage races, there are often 2 main goals, although there are other goals that cyclists may also compete for in a stage race.

The first goal is the person that wins the day. That is the first person across the line, or the in a time trial the person with the best time on the course, this person is the stage winner. The second goal, which is more prestigious and harder to achieve, is the General Classification or GC. This is the person with the best time across all of the stages. The best time is cumulative across stages, so riders are given an overall time for however many days of racing there are. For example, while today’s stage took riders roughly 17 minutes to complete, the best time for GC is 3 hours 52 minutes and 32 seconds, because it includes today’s time plus yesterday’s time.

The Stage

Stage 2 was a short and sweet time trial around Tirana, with a small climb in the middle, favoring riders that specialize in TTs. At 13.7 km long it was less than half the length of the only other time trial we will see later in stage 10. Josh Tarling, a British TT specialist on Ineos Grenadiers won today’s stage, and Primož Roglič grabbed the lead on the GC by 1 second.

The Dish

For today I decided to make a Tres Leches cake. “Trileçe” is one of the traditional desserts of Albania, with roots going back to the Ottoman empire. I think most people probably associate Tres Leches with Latin America, but when I called my mom to ask her for her Tres Leches recipe, she told me that Tres Leches is sometimes referred to as “The Albanian Cake” in Puerto Rico! According to wikipedia the cake originated in Latin America, but it is also popular in Albania. The main difference between traditional Trileçe and the recipe I went with (which is more of the Latin American variation) is that Albanian Trileçe is topped with a caramel sauce, whereas I went with whipped cream and some farm-fresh strawberries.

Reflections

While I like baking, I generally don’t make cakes because they can be a bit complicated. But this cake was pretty easy, and I had almost everything in my pantry already! I was blown away by how much liquid the cake was able to absorb. After a few hours in the fridge I prepared the toppings and it was ready to eat.

Historically, Tres Leches hasn’t been my go to dessert, but this really hit the spot tonight! I definitely under-whipped the whipped cream, but was otherwise happy with the texture. Overall 8/10

Until tomorrow, for our final Albanian stage of this year’s Giro!

1  The header photo is an open-license image of the clock tower at the Resurrection of Christ Orthodox Cathedral in Tirana, Albania.