Happy Birthday, Kailing!

Hi there! It's the time to start another year of birthday cake-baking for my dearie family and friends! The first among the four of us (secondary school dearies) is our dear Kailing. :) Last year, I baked a blueberry cheesecake for her. This time round, at her random request, I baked a coffee cream cake. She likes coffee. :)

Went blog hopping for coffee cake recipe, but there ain't many coffee cake recipes. For your information, I learnt that coffee cakes in fact doesn't have to contain coffee, they are usually rich cakes with nuts or fruits. They are known as coffee cakes cos' they are usually served with coffee during breakfast or tea time. So I'm not refering to those, I'm looking for cakes with coffee flavour :) In the end, I just settled with a simple coffee layered cake sandwiched and topped with coffee cream. I used a coffee chiffon recipe from Florence's blog.

I was quite worried my chiffon cake won't turn out well, but luckily it did. ;) The cake layers were filled with whipped non-dairy cream flavoured with instant coffee and toasted walnuts. For the decoration, I intended to sift cocoa powder to create a teddy bear picture with the word "Happy Birthday" from a cake stencil but it just turned out too messy. So I had to abort the plan and sift the cocoa powder on the entire cake and piped some simple flowers. I think I really need to work on my piping skills. heheh...

I must say chiffon cake really produces a very soft fine texture, if you have success with it. :D

Next birthday gal will be me... who's going to bake me a birthday cake?? :P