Orange Cake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream

My Dad's 65th Birthday. With Jonathan, Justine, Trystan, Serisa (Justine's BestFriend) and Anna.

Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting:

10 Tablespoons of Butter, unsalted (1.25 sticks)

1/2 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise (Use paring knife to scrape seeds from vanilla bean)

1.25 cups powdered sugar

pinch salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 Tablespoon heavy cream

Beat butter and vanilla seeds together. Add sugar and salt, mix. Add vanilla extract and cream, and beat about 4 minutes, scraping bowl often until light and fluffy.

**We have to quadruple this recipe to get enough frosting for a three layer cake.

Orange Cake:

1 Duncan Hines Orange Supreme Cake Mix

1 box vanilla instant pudding mix

4 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 11 oz can mandarin oranges, drained

Combine ingredients, mix well, pour into 3 round cake pans and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Next time, we will probably try to lower the temperature to 325. I think the cake could have possiblybeen moister... But it was pretty darn good. And had it been moister, I am not sure the layers would have held together as well. Dave actually made the cake and frosting for me, I just frosted it. :) Anna insisted that we have orange frosting since that is my Dad's favorite color. They were all out of orange tint, so we had to mix lemon yellow with red... Jonathan remarked that it was not orange, but yellow. So, I sprinkled some orange sugar on top.