Baker Moms - How Far in Advance of an Event Can You Bake a Cake?

If I have baked it before and know it is a good recipe, I will bake it the night before..

If I am worried about it, I will bake it early afternoon the day before.. this will give me time to either bake something else or tweak the recipe and start over.

I used to do catering.. I hardly ever used an untested recipe for an important event or client.

If I was having a party on Sat. The earliest I would bake the cake is Thursday night. But if I had time I would make it all in one day to keep it fresh. We went to a b-day party Sat at noon and my friend made her cake Thursday night. It was moist and tasted good.

Your plan is fine. DO NOT refrigerate the cake before it is frosted. This will cause it to dry out. I do cake decorating as a side business. For a Sunday event if you can bake it on Friday. After it cools completely, crumb coat it . THis is the first layer of frosting, it is not pretty, but it will hold the moisture in and then you can refrigerate it without any issues. Then you can frost and decorate on Saturday. If you don't want to frost right away, just wrap it in saran wrap and keep it out of the fridge.

Baking the cake and putting in the freezer can be done up to a week in advance without any issue. Once you decorate it, add frosting, etc. I would eat it within 24 hours to ensure freshness.

At my bakery I don't freeze anything, which adds more labor for me, but I'd rather serve someone something super fresh rather than risk it being a bit off after having been frozen for any serious length of time. Other bakeries do this, but it's just not for mine.

I wouldn't do it sooner than a week or so before the event.

Bake your cake & cool it completely. wrap it up really, really well in plastic wrap, then freeze it till you need it. Or don't freeze it if it's only going to be a day or 2, but still wrap it really well so it doeasn't dry out.

I'd give it a whole day to thaw before frosting. Butterceam can be made ahead, but you'll need to give it a little time to soften up before you can frost a cake with it.

Hi-just thought I'd throw in another tid bit of info. I read an article by Buddy Valastro aka "the cake boss" and he said believe it or not he ALWAYS freezes his cakes. He claimed that freezing them sealed in the moisture, but that refrigerating them would dry them out.
http://www.guideposts.org/inspirational-stories/cake-boss...

Hope that helps!

When I use corn oil, up to a week.

I'm not big on baking, but I'm big on decorating. I typically bake 3-4 days out. Build the gum paste and modeling chocolate on day 1&2. Fondant and carving on day 3. Finish on day 4.

Depends how elaborate I'm getting.

If its a carpal tunnel cake, I fondant on day 2, and start painting the fillagre.

My FIL bakes his cakes about 1full day before the decorating of them. He lets them cool naturally then brushes a mix of jelly or jam and water over them to seal them, it does not get them wet or show up at all, it's not that heavy. They stay moister this way and it seals them so there are no crumbs in the frosting. Then he either refrigerates them or let's them stay on the counter. I am really not sure about this.

He makes his butter cream right before frosting. It is one of those that is good when it is made up, refrigerating can make it separate and when it's cold the butter will not allow it to be spread easily. Then you have to let it get room temp and re-beat it. So why go through all that. If you are using canned frosting it will not matter, just make sure the frosting is at room temp before starting.

I think if you are going to try your hand at decoration a cake you might want to start practicing now. My FIL, makes all the roses on nails and lets them set up before putting them on the cakes. They always look extra nice and never a glob of frosting dropped accidentally.

I hope you'll post a picture of your cake.

My favorite cake to make from scratch is Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate with Cool Whip for the frosting sprinkled with pecan halves and colorful M&M's for the occasion. It has to be refrigerated when it's not being cut. The cool whip is cold and refreshing and the M&M's are cold and a bit crunchy along with the pecans it is perfect. Now that I am staying away from tree nuts I just frost it and don't add the pecans.

The cake recipe is light and moist. I think it is because you add boiling water to the mix and then bake it immediately. The chemical reaction starts very quickly and it rises very high.

Would it be too labor intensive to make it once as a "trial run" and see how it turns out? Then if you know you need to make changes or do anything different, you could make it the day before, then frost in the morning.

Believe it or not, quality from scratch cakes can be frozen with no problems, as can cupcakes.

For a big, labor intensive cake for a weekend party, I'll bake the cake the weekend before and wrap and freeze the layers or I'll bake on a Wednesday and wrap the layers up tightly. Yes you can frost one to two days ahead of time and store at room temperature as long as it's not too hot in your house. The vast amounts of sugar in butter cream frosting prevent the butter and the teeny bit of milk you use from going bad. You can also refrigerate the completed cake if you want to. I just did a buttercream cake for my son's first communion but I needed to refrigerate it because one part of the cake had cream cheese frosting as the filling. I just took it out of the fridge a few hours before serving and the frosting was nice and soft.