Make your own birthday cake

Today is an exception. Not about the street food, not about the stories from the past, or my bike riding adventures but about the challenge in my day. Tomorrow is my birthday. So I challenge myself to make my own cake for my day. I love baking, I probably got it from my mom, she loved to make cakes in the old times, but she has never been a good baker, for her making cake was just a "not serious" hobby. I'm surely better than my mom as there was time I was thinking to apply for Cordon Bleu to be a real "patissiere" - a pastry chef!

                          Polish cream cheese coffee cake, buttery, filled with cream cheese...

Since my kitchen was fully renovated with some luxury facilities two years ago, I decided to make cakes. To tell you the truth, it has never been easy for me...some was good, but mostly...right to the garbage bin. Not only need to follow accurately each step in the recipe, to weigh correctly every ingredient,  to know well how to do such things like : beat well, mix gently, but I was too inaccurate to follow the instructions or too generous to increase everything ...and that was disaster!

           and topped with crumbs that made of pecan, flour, butter and I did ad some coffee...

I don't know why I came up with this Polish cream cheese coffee cake, probably I love the cake with filling and esp. with coffee flavour when I heard the name, but I was wrong this cake doesn't content any coffee, it's just a cake for coffee time. So I did add coffee in the toppings as my personal touch.

           Cake is very good, moisture, buttery and esp. crispy, flavourful toppings. 

To be honest, what happened to me was sometime my first time cake was a success, the next one was a big failure. Only until the third attempt I got what you see in the picture: the first one was quite ok, the filling was very good, but the cake itself quite dense, my second was horrible - instead of vanilla extract by mistake I used a wrong Chinese wine for moon cake and for toppings I replaced pecans with almonds, that didn't work - the almonds, they didn't stick together.

                   All ingredients we need to make the cake, I used whole wheat pastry as I have it at home...

Ok if you want to challenge yourself in making your own cake for your special day, here is the original recipe.  I'm happy to share some tips: prepare the crumbs for toppings in advance, double the cream cheese as I used only one package, beat really well butter with sugar...

                 I used whole wheat pastry so the colour is darker, better double the cream cheese for filling.

                       For the toppings (the crumbs) you can increase a bit more, it makes cake more tasteful.

                         Don't  forget to sift the flour (I always forgot this step!)

             I'm happy that the cake came out very good, it would be better if a bit more cream cheese! 

                      Cake goes very well with coffee, I did add a bit coffee to the toppings as well. 

So I made my own cake for my day, I'm happy that something good came out...I will make a wish but meanwhile I'm happy to offer you this cake for the coffee. Taste it or do-it-by-yourself. It's fun!