The Stars and the Cookie Jar

1. Butter the pans, fit the bottoms with parchment, butter the parchment again.

2. Get the batter in the oven as soon as it's mixed and aerated through. Baking powder starts to work as soon as it's wet.

3. Spray the cooling racks with cooking spray or rub a lightly oiled paper towel over them to prevent ripping the top of your cooled cake.

4. The first cake out of its pan is never going to be the top layer.

4a. Don't try to halve cake layers (as to make four thinner layers instead of two standard ones) using a knife, unless you have a skeleton-style knife (holes in the knife body) that won't ruin the cake's crumb. Use plain dental floss or clean thread.

5. Spare some frosting, or make 1/3 batch extra, to crumb-coat your cake before actually frosting it and making it pretty.

6. Time it takes to frost a cake for the bake sale: 15 minutes. Time it takes to frost a cake for your wife's birthday: 45.

7. Offset icing spatula.

8. Light the lamp, not the rat Turn the cake stand, not the cake.

9. If you need a cake to look like food porn, or you just feel like Romulo Yanes, enlist your hair dryer. Set it to low and puff warm air at the frosted cake. The edges and spatula-marks of your butter, rolled fondant, or chocolate-based icing will smooth away to nothing. Do not attempt with whipped-cream or meringue frostings.

10. You don't need a cake decorating kit. Forks (for lines) and spoons (for peaks and hobnails) will do.