This example uses D3.js to draw a layered birthday cake in an SVG canvas. It demonstrates fundamental DOM manipulation by appending SVG shapes such as rectangles, ellipses, paths, and circles to create the cake base, icing, cherries, and candles. The cake is constructed from three distinct layers, each with a different height and dripping icing, with decorative elements added through custom functions that calculate positions. The code directly uses `d3.select` and `.append` methods to build the static illustration without any data-driven interaction.