Welcome to the Cake Decorators Q&A

Hi everyone,
I would like to know if there is a difference in shelf life and taste between cakes that have been frozen and freshly baked cakes once decorated?
I am delivering two cakes for a Jubilee party on the 4th, to be raffled to raise funds. I am working on Thursday 2nd so cannot bake or decorate on this day. I want them as fresh as possible so I would have to bake and freeze on Monday 30th then take out of the freezer on Thursday night ready to decorate on Friday morning. I have tried my cakes 5 days after baking fresh as an experiment, and they are still tasty but have not tried frozen.

If the shelf life is longer of freshly baked compared to frozen then I would rather bake on the Friday morning .
I didn’t want to bake and start decorating on the Wednesday as I felt they wont be at their best especially as I dont know when the winner of them will be cutting it.
Thank you
Sandra x

Hi Sandra

Day 1 of your defrosted cake will be as if it was fresh baked. This is the day, the 5 day approximation begins, in exactly the same way, as if it was fresh baked.

Freezing cakes does not necessarily lengthen the shelf life. However, it may make the crumb more moist. It does depend very much on the recipe. I find my chocolate cakes benefit from freezing but not so much my fatless cakes.

It will be wise to place a shelf life and, an eat by label on the cake, to alert the winner when it should be consumed by. That leaves no room for any misunderstandings. It’s also advisable to leave written instructions on how the cakes must be stored prior to the raffle and once it goes to the winner.

Just to be extra careful, don’t forget to include an ingredients label to cover allergy regulations.

I used to bake for charity raffles regularly and this method never failed me.

Hope this helps ?

Thank you MIWL,
I shall freeze both then, oh yes- you have to be on the ball nowadays I always use my labels and include an explanation letter of do’s and dont’s and get signatures, so different from years ago and for the better I think, I should be due a return visit from the EHO soon.
I love the science behind baking, can you recommend a good book on this subject.
Thank you
Sandra. x

Hi Sandra

As you can imagine, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of educational books on the science of baking. I’m not much good at science, I tend to be more of an experimenter. My hubby is a scientist and has helped me a great deal to understand much of what I didn’t learn as a schoolgirl.

For the professional baker, a must-have, brilliant book is, ‘On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of The Kitchen’ by Harold McGee. It’s expensive but worth its weight in gold. The other, for a less heavy read, is ‘Ratio’ by Michael Ruhlman. It is also a lot more affordable. 🙂 I own and recommend both these books.

Have a look in your local library for them. I always prefer to borrow very expensive books. However, they are not always available, in which case, an investment buy is a treasure to own! 🙂

PS I ask for book vouchers for birthday and Christmas presents and usually put them towards the more expensive books which I dream of owning. I’ve stopped now that I have a huge library on all kinds of everything!

Thank you MIWL,
I will look these up, it didn’t cross my mind to go to the library to look, I think computers have taken over this long lost art of picking up a book, I was always at the library when I was young, we had no choice way back in the 1960’s. (sooo old)!
Thank you for your help. X

You’re welcome, Sandra. I rely heavily on my library as I’m not very good with computers. I love the personal social interaction with fellow bookworms now that we can at long last! …. and I don’t feel left out.
Technology, on so many levels, has long passed me by, plus I really can’t summon up any enthusiasm for it, Feeling extremely old too, in my 70s! 🙂 X