I'm making my first cake for a big event tomorrow morning and I never seem to get the cake layers as big as I want them to be. I'm making a two tiered round cake with the bottom chocolate and the top vanilla for 70 people. The recipes I use for both chocolate and vanilla say that they make 2 9 inch round cakes but I find that they usually come out a little short. Can anyone suggest how many times I should make each cake and what size pans to use to make a nice cake? I was thinking of doing 2.5 chocolate and 1.5 vanilla and making them into three layers per tier but I don't know if that will be ok or even what size pans to use to make it properly.

Thanks!

I don't know how tall you were hoping they'd be, but if you bake two 2" layers per tier and made 12" x 8" tiers, it would serve 80 according to the Wilton wedding chart. HTH.
http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/baking-wedding-cake-2-inch-pans.cfm

I only own even-size pans. Here's part of why.......

I view one cake mix as "a batch" of batter. One batch, according to teh box directions can be poured into two 8" or two 9" pans. Logically, if I'm pouring the same amount of batter into a larger pan, the cake is going to spread out more and thus not be as tall. Since I'm a mix baker, I'm not going to whip up another cake mix so I can use "some" of it for a normal height cake and then throw the rest away.

Either use 8" pans or add more batter to the 9" pans.