When would be best to bake this cake?

[CoodleMoodle]

It's DS's birthday on Wednesday, and I was planning on baking and decorating his cake tomorrow (we're in a bubble with DM and she's coming over in the morning so can keep the DC out of the way).

I made the same cake for DD's birthday, left it for a few hours to cool, and it crumbled when I tried to ice it. I made sure the icing was room temp, was extremely careful, did a thin layer, etc, but chunks still came off as I went around. It was delicious and I managed to fix the icing as best I could, but it was so difficult! This keeps happening to me...

When I looked it up it said one way to stop it happening is to store the cake in the fridge for a few hours at least before attempting to do a crumb coat - is that the best thing to do? I've never put a cake in the fridge before and am a bit apprehensive!

If I do it all tomorrow then I'll have to bake it in the morning and decorate it in the afternoon, so it'll have a few hours to sit in between. If nothing else it'll save me time if I do the baking today, but does it affect the quality of the cake? DS is only going to be 2 so he doesn't care, but I do!

Thanks for any advice.

I think most professional cake makers freeze the cake before icing to lessen the crumb issue, so I guess refrigerating would be a similar thing!

Yup, put it in the fridge. It makes it firm
Up so the soft icing you put on top has a nice firm base.

Thanks both! DD wanted to help me do the mixing and it was easier to do that today, so we did. I wrapped it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge, ready for icing tomorrow afternoon. Really hoping it works, it drove me crazy when I was trying to decorate the last one.

One last question. Should I leave it on the side for a bit before I start or will it be best to get on with it straight away while it's still quite cold? I'm planning on a layer of chocolate buttercream icing in the middle and over the top, and then piping directly onto that. That's what I did with DD's cake, but obviously without chilling it first.

Do it while it's cold! Sounds gorgeous