Everytime I put filling in a cake most of it seems to squish out when I put the other layers on top. How can I make the icing or filling thicker to keep this from happening? Or is there some other trick I dont know about to do this?

Thanks in advance

It depends on the filling, but it helps to pipe a dam of buttercream around the perimeter of the layer and fill that in with the filling. With VERY soft fillings (especially on larger layers), I sometimes pipe another circle inside of that one for added support. Also, make sure to not overfill your cakes, because as they settle, even with a dam, if there's too much filling it will cause bulges.

Everything you ever wanted to know about making your 1st tiered/stacked/layer cake:

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-605188-.html

The above super thread has filling amounts by pan size as well as so much more.

HTH

I pipe a thick dam as well...never had a problem! good luck!

The cakes I have been making were for family and they said that they wanted the same type icing as I use on the birthday cakes I make for my kids (5 lb tub of Wiltons decorator icing). Would it be better to use buttercream made from scratch for the dam and filling? I've never made it before so I'm not sure if its thicker or not.

All you have to do is take whatever buttercream you are using... put a little in a bowl and add some powdered sugar. Just thicken it up a little, until you can almost roll it in your fingers. Then put it in a piping bag with just a coupler, no tip... pipe a line around the edge of the cake... then fill.

The extra thickness of the powdered sugar like vstar_pilot said should help to form a more firm dam between the edge of your cake and the filling inside.