Birthday Cake, step 1

  

 
Over the next few days I will be posting a step by step guide to decorating cakes.  I admit it may be more a how-I-did-it than a how-to, but hopefully it will be a help if you decide to decorate your own cake!

I baked the cakes.  It took a while because the recipe only made two cakes and I wanted a three layer cake. So I made two batches and had a left over cake (which I will talk about later).

The first thing I did (after baking the cakes, clearly) was level their tops.  To do that I used a very large serrated edge knife and cut off the domed top of the cake so that it was perfectly even across the whole top.  By the way, save all the crumbs in a baggie in the fridge, they're great to snack on!

Then I used a pastry brush to brush a liberal amount of Frangelico liquor on the tops.  Since I cut off the tops the inside of the cake was exposed and the Frangelico soaked nicely into the cake.

To be continued...