Best choice for children's birthday cake

[Tailtwister]

What's the best choice of cake for a children's birthday party? It's going to be a 2 tier round cake and I was thinking perhaps a madeira cake for strength? The other options would be a vanilla sponge or chocolate cake, but DS isn't so keen on chocolate. It will be covered by sugar paste and my very best likeness of Captain Barnacles et al.

Also, what kind of filling? I usually go for a vanilla buttercream, but would some jam go down well in addition to that?

All advice would be very welcome!

DS is 6, and for every birthday except his first he has had vanilla sponge with jam and buttercream filling - it's a classic! He doesn't like chocolate cake either.

I often use Rachel Allen's sponge recipe, but Nigella has a madeira recipe that she says lends itself well to being covered in icing for children's birthdays.

If you use dowels to hold up the tier then sponge should be fine.

Im doing a sponge with buttercream and jam for DD1s birthday next week. I add yoghurt though which makes it a bit denser.

I like a lemon or vanilla sponge. I usually fill with jam and buttercream and then coat with buttercream and decorate as necessary.

Excellent, thanks for the advice! I think I'll go for a vanilla sponge as most of the children will like it. I'll need to have a look at those recipes GoldenGreen. I think my SIL has used the madeira one in the past and thought it was good.

Buttercream and jam should work well for the filling too. Haven't used yogurt before wanna, so will certainly look into that, thanks for the tip.

Now all I need to do is work out how to do the Octonauts. I've found a tutorial, but they never turn out the same do they!