“Why do you (and other professional bakers) freeze your cakes? Does that mean I’m getting an old cake?”
There is a viral TikTok video going around about a girl who started making her friend’s 3-tiered wedding cake 5 days before the event.
As someone who’s made DOZENS of cakes this year, it takes at least two full days to make a single-tier decorated cake. Let alone three tiers.
The comments are honestly really awful, though! If you don’t have anything nice to say, you DON’T have to say anything. 😭
So many commenters were saying how they’re glad they DON’T (?) have a friend like her because they would want a “fresh” wedding cake, and that they prefer “fresh” cake to “five-day-old freezer cake.”
Most professional bakers do not make their cakes on the day of, or even the night before, an event. Here’s why. ↓
Why professional bakers use the freezer as a tool to make your cakes as delicious and moist as possible.
Freezing a cake locks in moisture, doesn’t remove it
If you wrap your cake in cling film 20 minutes after it comes out of the oven and then freeze it, you can keep it for weeks and still have moist layers.
Freezers keep cakes moist by halting evaporation. When you wrap it properly, the freezing temperature locks in 🔒 the internal moisture and prevents steam from escaping. As the cake thaws, the trapped moisture is reabsorbed, resulting in a moist texture.
It’s how professional bakers prepare in advance.
Freezing a cake makes it WAY easier to decorate
Working with frozen layers makes them firm enough to cut, stack, and frost without a ton of crumbs getting in the way.
Once the cake fully thaws, it’s still not firm. It thaws to its original texture.
Time in the freezer allows your cake to mature in flavor
As I mentioned earlier, wrap your cake 20 minutes after it’s out of the oven. You’ll trap some of the steam in with the cake. Then, freeze it for at least a day.
When you wrap the cakes in their steam and freeze them, they have plenty of time to mature in flavor. The steam disperses through the cake, and all the ingredients get more time to get to know each other. It’s the same logic as why beef stew tastes better when you let it sit for a day.
Hi! My name is Shaylee.
I’m a cake decorator based in Puyallup, Washington. Silly Goose is an at-home pre-order only cake studio. I specialize in really *really* delicious and scratch-made chiffon layer cakes. I started Silly Goose after a decade-long career in marketing, so my blog infuses my love for cake, business, and marketing.
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