Christmas Tree Cake

This was my first tiered cake. It was a red velvet cake with cream cheese filling, frosted in buttercream. I made several big mistakes. The first was in thinking that greasing and flouring a pan would be enough to keep the cake from sticking. I've had cakes stick before, but I never learn. This time, the cake layers completely fell apart when I took them out of the pan. Since they were so crumbly, I wasn't able to level them; hence the slightly wonky look to the cake.

My second big mistake: I underestimated the amount of frosting I'd need for the star tip layer of frosting I'd planned. I'd used a ton of frosting to compensate for the woodgy cake shape, so I ran out of green. You can see where I had to re-mix (cue record scratching) the green color. I missed the mark a little.

The fun part was doing the swags. I'd never done them before; they're very delicate. I broke a bunch of strings before I got the hang of it. They look a little bumpy, but that's because they're on top of star-tipped frosting. I finished the cake off with white dots painted with gold pearl dust and a star cookie.

All in all, I mixed six batches of frosting between the cupcakes and this cake. SIX!! By the end of my two-day baking binge, I practically had powdered-sugar lung.