Third times a charm...My cake finally leveled very well, without incident this morning. I took everyone's advice here, and leveled it, and torted it while it was warm. My problem is, part of the edge came off at the far end of the cake, when I was almost finished leveling. This isn't a class cake, and I think I can correct it....how with icing? It's going to have chocolate fudge crusting BC, and some piped swirls on it.

Take some of the cake that you had left over from the leveling and crumble it, then mix it with some of your icing. This makes a kind of mortar that you can use to reconstruct that little bit of cake. You have to be careful with it because it can come off, but it gives you a nice well-formed surfact to crumbcoat and then frost. This is also good for filling in any airholes or pock marks on the surface of your cake before you ice it and (if you're going to) put fondant on it. I know it's save my rear more than once!