Making birthday cakes for friends can be a gratifying experience.

However, carving and icing cakes can become a frustrating and messy affair unless proper steps are taken.

Shaping and carving a cake can be especially infuriating when the cake is moist and pieces of it fall off, ignoring the path of your knife. To avoid this, bake the cake in advance and freeze it for several hours. It is much easier to carve the cake when it is frozen.

Icing a cake is another hard fought battle. Often times, crumbs will stick to the icing on the knife, instead of the icing sticking to the cake. A better strategy is to fill a piping bag with icing and to cover the cake with it. Then, use a knife to spread the icing evenly and to scrape off excess icing. This layer should be thin and is called the “crumb coat.” Its purpose is to have all the crumbs stuck together, so they do not show through the icing. Leave the crumb coat to dry for 10 to 15 minutes, and then apply the second and final layer of icing.