To make the cranberry-filled cake, combine cranberries, sugar, orange zest, juice, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves in a saucepan, simmer until cranberries pop, mash, and cool.
In a separate bowl, mix beaten egg whites and buttermilk with scraped vanilla bean seeds, let stand. Preheat oven, prepare cake pans, whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cream butter, gradually add flour mix and buttermilk, divide batter into pans, and bake.
Make frosting by beating cream cheese, butter, lemon zest, juice, and confectioners’ sugar. Assemble the cake with cranberry sauce layers and lemon frosting, crumb coat, refrigerate, frost, and optionally top with sugared cranberries.