Cake people, help please!

[WillowtreeHouse]

I'm making a salted caramel birthday cake and although I've made them before, I always feel like salted caramel buttercream can be a bit much with a caramel sponge, salted caramel filling and drip. Do you think a vanilla buttercream would still be as nice? Thanks!

I would use chocolate buttercream probably, with less sugar . Vanilla is always a bit over sweet.

The birthday boy doesn't like chocolate unfortunately! I agree though, vanilla is so sweet. I might do Italian buttercream as that isn't quite so sweet?

Would it be better if the cake itself was just plain vanilla, so as to highlight the salted caramel rest of it?

Or there's cream cheese icing like you'd get on a carrot cake, it has a bit of a tang to it...