Day Three Hundred Sixty Three: Ruffle Tower Cake

A few months ago I found Martha's Ruffle Tower Cake and I've wanted to try it ever since.  Unfortunately all that piping of icing was rather daunting and I forgot about it.

Ok, so I was procrastinating.

With only three days to go it's now or never so I decided on Monday to give it a try.  It's a multi-layer cake covered in Martha's Swiss Meringue Buttercream icing.  The icing alone is worth the effort.  After layering the cake and tinting the icing pink, you are ready to begin the hard part:  piping the icing into these adorable little ruffles.

It's not hard, really.  Using a #103 tip (it looks like a teardrop) make long zig-zags up the side of the cake until the cake is covered.  I should have allowed my icing to chill a little longer in the refrigerator because the heat from my hands caused the icing to warm up a little too much.  The result is that my little ruffles are a tad droopy.    

Not bad, but I could have done better.

Clearly, I have not yet mastered cutting the cake into even layers.

I swear I had not been drinking when I cut these.  I clearly have a cake-leveling handicap.