Learning Curve

I've been baking for the past two hours and after two two-layer cake attempts I have exactly one layer. What is happening?! This shouldn't be that hard. I mean, come on!

I know, I know. Sounds like a repeat of the Hard Boiled Egg incident (remind me tell you that one). Three of my four layers broke because I was a little too excited and tried to turn them on to the cooling rack a little to early. Lessons learned? You bet!

1. Sift. Sift the flour. Sift the powdered sugar. Sift. Sift. Sift. I have so many tiny lumps in my first batch of "buttercream" icing.
   
2. "Buttercream" icing as made by Wilton actually has no butter in it.
3. "If there is no butter, than how is it butter cream?" Well, my friend, let me tell you: Crisco and "butter flavoring."
4. When the recipes says "Wait 10 minutes before turning cake onto cooling wrack," do as they say! They mean it or else your husband will be scraping cake bits from the pan and asking you if there was supposed to be this much cake left behind ("No honey. Not really.")
   
5. Don't wait until the night before your son's 2nd birthday party to decide you're going to make a layer cake from scratch with homemade icing and hand decorated.
   
6. If you do wait until the night before, don't wait until 9 PM to get started knowing that you've never done this before and there is a high potential for cake disasters.

Onward bakers! Two more layers to go and let's up I don't crack these, too (or I'm going to be cracked!)