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I'm so over the heavy, in extremis cakes of my youth. You know, Death By Chocolate, or stuffed with everything you can get the batter to hold--like Hummingbird Cake.

For the past couple years, I've been making white and yellow cakes, with whipped cream or mousse filling and the splendid perfection of impeccably ripe fruit. light, light, light. Citrus curds are yummy, too, as fillings. I usually flavor the batter to complement the filling.

When only chocolate will do, Sachertorte. I've been making it since college, but apricot isn't very popular amongst my kith & kin, so I use raspberry or cherry. Once, as a special birthday request, I filled & iced the cake with Swiss meringue, then dripped a fudgy ganache down the sides. It was an imitation of Max's Cafe "Niagara Falls Cake". It was gone very quickly and well appreciated.

Currently, I'm trying to perfect crumb cake versions: vanilla ("plain"), spice and with fruit. First, mini muffins, then muffin tops.

If you're going to sell by the slice, I would buy pieces of fruit-filled quick breads like pumpkin, persimmon, apple-walnut.

I strongly suggest you develop a killer buttercream. A good cake becomes a repeat, must-have with a well balanced, rich but not overwhelming, frosting. And, of course, you can doctor the flavoring extracts to suit the final product.
My reason for this suggestion is that while I don't make buttecream except as a special request for a special occasion,--because I feel bad about its unhealthfulness--it doesn't stop me from buying a high-end cuppie for myself!

Good luck! a homey bakery is a great idea.

Anything with caramel frosting is amazing. It's good on jam cakes, but I think it would be yummy on a plain yellow cake too.

My friend Wendy's carrot cake with ginger cream cheese frosting. Lots of pecans, carrots and fresh pineapple. They are never pretty but always tasty.

My favorite cake is really a frosting made by Van de Kamps bakery in L.A. I believe the bakery closed about 15 years ago. My mom would buy their birthday cake at Ralph's market for my first 14 birthdays. I love their frosting. Does anyone have the recipe? I would love to make some. Please, if you are part of the Van de Kamp family, send the recipe so I can make it for my kids.I live in Oregon and Alaska now and cannot find a frosting like that!
Thanks

The kind you can eat!

Southern Living's Mile-High Hummingbird Cake is one of my most requested recipes. A true show-stopper.
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1727431

I just LOVE cakes! Nothing too fancy, a good German chocolate cake or my current favorite is lemon cake with lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream icing. Fresh coconut cake that my mom used to make is a sentimental fave as well.

I love the Hawaiian cake with fresh cream topping

I made an Elvis cake for my birthday a couple years ago: banana cake with mini chocolate chips and peanut butter frosting, from this blogpost: http://www.foodaphilia.com/2007/07/elvis-cake.html Wrote happy birthday to myself in chocolate - it was lovely. Italian meringue buttercream with peanut butter sounds even better than the confectioners sugar frosting in the recipe.

My favorite cake is a buttermilk cake with coconut frosting and passion fruit curd. Curd freezes, and by having lemon, raspberry, passion fruit, mango curd on hand with some Flo Braker yellow layers, you could turn out a bunch of different cakes.

One other thought would be a flourless almond meal cake, coated with a little ganache, for those who have problems with wheat.

Flo Braker's Buttermilk Cake is possibly the best cake I've ever tasted. You can frost it with some lemon curd (she also has a very good recipe for that), but I usually eat it plain, because I find the cake itself is so delicious that a frosting of any sort would detract from its flavor. It also freezes beautifully, if you need to store it for a while.

One other nice thing about a ganache is that it's so versatile. If you do one, buy extra chocolate and cream. Melt all the chocolate, but only use half for the frosting. Use half of the rest, mix with a small amount of cream and a few spoonfuls of your favourite spirit or liqueur, refrigerate, and then roll into balls and dip in cocoa and sugar, or else dip into tempered chocolate. The easiest truffles ever.

You could decorate the Elvis cake with candied bacon. Mmmm!

Black Forest Cake is my fave ~ I was just at a dinner party that ended with pear clafoutis & chocolate dipped madelines.