Hi All

I am planning on making our Dad's 80th birthday can and would like to do a vanilla cake tier ( i normally do chocolate mud).  I have been trying out some recipes and although they are great recipes I'm finding they don't stay moist for as long as a chocolate mud cake would.  So I'm thinking of either marinating the cake with natural fruit juice prior to covering with fondant or adding a cream filling (not sure which cream yet).  

Has anyone here used either method and how did you get on with the fondant? and what filling did you use?  I would rather not fill with buttercream if I can help it as Dad isn't into sweet fillings.  To make things a bit harder our Dad's favourite cake is a Chilean Bizcocho which our Mum used to make so I'm trying to replicate it the best I can.

A liquid added to the layers before covering would keep ti moist a little longer, but the vanilla cake is generally not going to be as moist as a mud cake no matter what you do. Mud cake is dense, so I assume that it's more a textural thing.

I had to look up the recipe for the bizcocho, but it looks like an ever drier version of a genoise, if that's possible. You'd definitely want to use a soaking syrup for that. If that's what he likes, though, why not just do that and not cover it with fondant? You probably have ideas about decorating it really fancy, but if he likes that then you could do it and just decorate it the regular way with a gumpaste topper or something and skip the fondant altogether.

Thanks for the advice, I may have to rethink the design of the cake an come up with something that will work with the vanilla cake.  So far this is the best vanilla recipe i've tried http://www.mycakeschool.com/recipes/almond-scratch-recipe/ (i made it without the almond extract).