Cake Desecration 101

I attempted my first decorated  desecrated cake.  This is not as easy as it looks on TV. 

First problem:  How do you keep the layers from falling when the instructions say to rotate halfway through baking?  They fell so I ended up with swayback layers.  The Icing edging to keep the filling from leaking out the sides made this even more evident.

What's with the knot on the left?

Second problem:  Crumb coat is supposed to seal in crumbs, not create a bunch of them.

Third problem:  The graceful drizzle ended up looking like a serious Julia Child and the chicken moment.  I spread it out with the back of a spoon so it wouldn't look so macabre,

and I did a lovely job spreading it evenly, I see.  Well, just sprinkle on some slivered almonds to distract from that.

I did pipe along the bottom to close in the gap between the cake and the board.  Unfortunately I didn't make a nice shell border at the bottom as I did at the top.  The top border doesn't look too bad for a first attempt.

I used the recipe for The White Lily Almond Cake.  I ground up about 1/2 cup of whole almonds to put in the cake.  The filling is just raspberry fruit spread.  The icing is flavored with vanilla and almond. 

The instructor at the Wilton class (first one was last week) said that I needed 6 batches of Icing for our next class on Thursday.  I found that hard to believe.  No longer.  This was one batch of icing, I did not have enough to frost the crumb coat or to add any other decorations.  A shell border at the bottom would have used up everything before I even got to the top.  And this was a single 8" square layer. 

Good thing I have a large Kitchenaid.