Coffee cake

My first real cake, made with delicious coffee-flavored buttercream. It was really good, and simple! Because this cake doesn't require leveling, you can simply bake two layers separately, then stack them — a perfect recipe for beginners! :-)

I made my cake with normal instant coffee, but you can also use decaf coffee for same taste, but caffeine-free cake! :-)

German Zimtsterne (cinnamon almond cookies)

I always wanted to make these, and finally got the guts — oh boy, I wasn't really prepared for the amount of nitty-gritty with making these. I started with original German recipe that called for 500g of almonds, but that ended up being 2 full baking sheets and lots of sneaky snacking between steps ;-) But the result is good, and these cookies are worth the effort.