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Hi, I am making 2 cakes for a friend. One vanilla sponge and one chocolate. Each will have 3 layers. The sponge is going to a bee shape and I found three layers of jam and buttercream too sweet. I recently went on course and the teacher said she puts different fillings on different layers. Can anyone suggest what I should do. I am new to this so would appreciate any advise! Thank you!

You can filling with rasperry jam and cream cheese…or chocolate buttercream and ganache

Hi Angelcyrus

It depends on what those fillings are and what the celebration is. If the fillings are fresh dairy or fresh fruit, these will need refrigerating and considerably reduce cake shelf life. It would be difficult to ice them with fondant which can not be refrigerated. An alternative might be to fill with something like curds, lemon orange, lime or possibly mix them in with white chocolate ganache or just use them as they are in each different layer. Adding dessicated coconut or crushed nuts will add texture and taste. These flavours would go well with vanilla sponge. Chocolate marries well with orange, mint, raspberry and any of the darker berries. A splash of an appropriate liqueur enhances the chocolate flavour. Other flavours to experiment with could be marmallow fluff, nut pralines, thick caramel sauce. The meringue type butter creams are less sweet than butter cream, lovely to eat, but again with reduced shelf life. I think you would have to consider how long each type of filling will sit out without refrigerating. I know this may sound crazy but sometimes I crush bars of flavoured chocolate, jaffa cakes and other biscuits as fillings mixed in with a little ganache and some favourite alcohol. There are some good filling
and flavoured icing ideas on the Sugar and Crumbs site, you can find their link here http://www.cakeflix.com/blog/how-to-make-chocolate-mud-cake. Experimenting is fun and can produce some interesting flavour results.