My third mistake was waiting too long before turning the cakes out of the pan. At home, I usually put the timer on for 10 minutes. I got distracted playing with the kids and lost track of time. It was probably an hour. And yes, they fell apart.
My fourth mistake was making frosting that was too thick. Trying to spread the frosting to "glue" the cake together was not working very well. A thinner frosting would have been easier to spread.
I was too embarrassed to share the end results until my daughter encouraged me. Even cookbook authors like me have failures! It makes me appreciate the successes so much more. At least one way this experience was a great success was spending time with grandchildren baking. And the frosted cake tasted great! What mistakes have you made? And your great success?