That Takes the Cake!: 1st Layer Cake ~ Trying my hand at cake levelling

Happy Mother's Day to me! My family bought me a set of Pyrex bakeware for Mother's Day. It's not in yet, but I know about it since I picked it out myself. HOW ORIGINAL! Perfect gift for the budding baker. Thanks family! I'm especially thankful for all of the amazing little hand crafted pieces of artwork from my children. These kids rock.

Lots of together time today. Breakfast feast with my own Mommy. A drive to take in some countryside. Some yardwork and outdoor play. And alas, some baking.

Lily was my partner in crime today. When all was done, Griffin asked for a piece and said "Hey Dad! When it's Father's Day, the boys will bake a cake together too!" and my heart broke in an instant. He felt left out. Waaah! So I reassured him that my next baking project with be with him alone. Silly Mommy thought he was having fun with his outside time. My son, I could go on forever...but I digress.

I really just wanted to try my hand at two particular things today.
A) Levelling cakes.
B) Smoothing Icing with a sheet of paper.

Here are the pics and captions of the day.

Two 8" white cakes

I'm still learning. These were slightly cracked. Still delish.

I fooled around with a mixture of icing and mandarin oranges. I ended up not using this.
I'll use whipped cream with the oranges next time. Or vanilla pudding?

My first levelled cake. I used this big knife instead of the Wilton levelling device.
Saved the cake tops for future cake pops.

Making a damn around to keep the filling from spilling over.

Chocolate pudding

All spread

The top layer levelled, and then set upside down on our chocolate pudding filling.

My Wilton Cake Icer and 16' featherweight bag.

First time trying this out too.

I had a lot of bubbles. No biggie though.

Smoothing it out with the spatula

Using some letterhead to attempt smoothing the layer after 10 minutes.
In this case, 10 min wasn't long enough to create a crust and this method didn't work for me.
Boo hiss!