My first time making a layer cake turned out so cute! I didn't even want to give it away cause it looked so pretty. I made some mistakes here and I can't wait to do better next time because I learned a lot from this bake. So first, I forgot to buy ceremonial matcha so I had to use my culinary grade, and the cake turned out so dark, but the matcha flavor was definitely still there. Nikita didn't mind, but I want to bake him a better one when I get the chance. I also forgot to sift the matcha. That is super important because you can definitely see the dark green clumps in the cake. I always forget. Second, is leaving out my butter. I ALWAYS forget to do this because I just forget. I did microwave it but, I think the buttercream would have mixed better with the sugar if i left the butter out for room temperature rather than microwaving it. Nikita didn't like the frosting as much because it was so sweet. He said: "like the flavor, but you really need to chill on the sugar lol." That made me giggle, because I DID put less sugar lmao. Anyways, I just think it needed to mix better. That was my first time making buttercream and it was much thicker and like a paste more than I thought it would be. I kept adding more heavy cream hoping it would get more water and it did work a bit and made it less sweet, which is what we wanted. I think another problem is that I used regular sugar instead of powdered sugar. According to the internet, powder sugar is more thin and smaller so it mixes and melts much better for frosting and glazes. I'll definitely note this for my next bake that includes buttercream. One interesting thing to note is that, if your buttercream is yellow, just keep mixing and it will turn more white. I don't know why this happens, maybe because the butter will just lose its color and keep mixing? Someone on the internet said to do this and it worked! I mixed it for like 10 minutes, but it did turn less yellow. This was my first time making LAYERS and it was so fun. I also bought a small piping kit with multiple tips from daiso to make the little frosting flowers and it was really fun! Now this is why I bake, to test and try out new things. I can't wait to bake something new and experiment again. From the cake bits that I tried out, I would give this recipe 5 cactuses. It was super easy to follow and my cake was still pretty good even though I didn't use ceremonial matcha and powdered sugar. The strawberry and piping decorations turned out super cute, along with the matcha powder on top. I'd say this was a mostly a successful bake. i hope Nikita would want to try another one of my bakes again!