Birthday cakes 2009

Cakes are hard, especially when you try to put strawberry filling in them and the filling gradually oozes out with every passing minute of the journey from your house to the birthday party site. I have been known to try to use toothpicks to try to coax the cake to stay together in one piece even after the crack that appeared once I took it out of the pan makes itself known. This method, as it turns out, is not particularly effective. Tasty cakes all, though. How can you go wrong with buttercream and basic yellow cake (from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman--an amazing and truly instructional cookbook)?