Cakeing (is that a word?)

I am praticing with cake flavors to decide what the second layer of my sister's graduation cake should be.  I asked what she wanted and she decided on Chocolate with chocolate chip cookie dough filling and told me I could suprise her with the other flavor.  So of course that means I'm going to have to experiment with a bunch of flavors, which means I wont be fitting into my old jeans any time soon, haha.  I made a Nilla wafer cake last week with banana mousse filling and buttercream icing, it was delish.  I ended up giving it to my mother in law for her birthday.  My decorating wasn't spectacular but hey I'm just starting.

This week I made an orange dreamsicle cake with vanilla mousse and orange flavored buttercream.  I was concerned there might be an overwhelming orange flavor but nope, it was just enough to make it melt in your mouth and that was without any filling or frosting.

Here they are cooling:

Yum!

I got the recipe from cakecentral.com in this thread, and here is the link to all the recipes collected if you don't have time to read through all 376 pages of that thread, haha.  I think I learned more about baking cakes, making filling and icings, and coming up with flavor combinations from that thread than all my hours of watching cake boss and reading cookbooks combined.

My one warning for anyone who attempts to make one of the recipes is that it is a very large recipe.  I used my largest mixing bowl and it was almost full to the top with batter.  1 recipe for me made 2 9inch cakes and 11 cupcakes (of course there are only 10 cupcakes in the above picture because I had to taste test).

Here is my finished cake.  I didn't do any decorating because it was just for us and I really just wanted to try the flavor to see if it would be in the running for the graduation cake.

I love the way layered cakes look.  My husband isnt' a fan of orange flavored anything but he even ate this cake.  I'm over all very proud of myself, especially with this being only my second attempt at making cakes like this.

I'm even more excited that my cousin asked me to help her with a bridal shower this weekend.  She wants me to make lemon flavored cupcakes.  So I'm going to make 12 lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese icing and 12 lemon cupcakes with blueberry filling and cream cheese icing, yum doesn't that sound delish.  I've been wanting to try the lemon cake recipe so of course I said yes, and then proceeded to offer my services to make a cupcake stand, recipe box, recipe cards, and some decorations.  I love bridal and baby showers so I just couldn't help myself.