Cake adventures - a tale in many parts

Look at me posting more than once in a day.

My friend Laura turns 30 in a couple weeks and we are having a 20's/30's themed birthday party for her. Everyone is encouraged to dress as someone from that time period and it's going to be a lot of fun. My pal Sarah and I are attempting to make a really fabulous cake. I'm a pretty fair baker, but I've never attempted a tiered cake before. We found this picture as our inspiration:
We are going to do it without the silver layer separators. That's a little too advanced for our first big cake adventure. We are going to make it three tier, smaller tiers so we don't end up with cake for 100.

We're having a planning meeting tonight and I wanted to bring a smaller "test cake" with this made from scratch yellow cake recipe. Bakerella has come through for me before with her Oreo Truffles and I have been eager to try another one of her recipes.

Image from Bakerella's website

This post is going to have to be updated throughout the day because I just popped the layers in the oven. But I couldn't resist getting on here and raving about how delicious the batter is. I would have eaten every bit of that cake batter if people weren't counting on me to deliver a cake tonight. It is the lightest, most delicious cake batter I've ever had and I cannot wait for the rest of this to play out. I'm trying two different icings later on tonight, a chocolate ganache for the filling and a really simple buttercream for the exterior (I don't do fondant). Keep you posted!!


UPDATE: The cake turned out really well. It was a delicious cake. It was denser than I had imagined, but the flavor was excellent. I think I overwhipped the chocolate ganache filling, but other than that, things came out super well and I think we have a winning recipe for Laura's birthday cake.