I don't often fill cakes with anything other than buttercream because of the first wedding cake I did. They wanted lemon - so I used lemon pudding. It seemed to be absorbed into my cake and disappeared completely - what went wrong??? Help - I really would like to use fruit fillings.

I've never really had that happen before. I have used chocolate pudding with a chocolate cake and they did blend together a bit but you could still taste the difference. I would give it another try. If you just want to play around, go simple. Use premade pie filling. I use the rasberry one I think by comstock and its pretty good, goes great with chocolate cake and IMBC. don't forget your dam before you fill otherwise it will ooze out the sides.

Before I put the filling on I put a very thin layer of buttercream over the layer then pipe the dam and then spread on the filling. The thin layer of buttercream keeps the filling from soaking in. For a pudding filling I also make it a little thicker or firmer by adding less milk to the pudding mix.

I use the sleeves of filling that I buy from my cake supply store. They come in many fruit flavors as well as creams.

Maybe the lemon filling was too thin.

I do what grams does. When I crumb coat I also crumbcoat the top of every layer. It definitely helps so that the filling doesn't get absorbed into the cake.

When I'm filling a white cake with say a raspberry or strawberry filling I always do a double dam and let it stiffen up a bit before putting the top layer on.