I am planning on making a wedding cake in a few weeks. I need for it to serve about 100 people and have fondant icing. I will tell you my plan and I would appreciate any input! 3 tier cake. Bake the layers and freeze. How far in advance can I do this, when do I level them and do I need to cover with a crumb coat before freezing? When I take them from the freezer how long does it take them to thaw? The wedding is on a Saturday and dinner and cake at 5pm. How far in advance can I put the fondant on and the cake still be good?

I usually bake all my cakes on Tuesday for the weekend. (Or maybe the Friday before for a REALLY big weekend...) Then I wrap and freeze each layer. Take the proper cakes out the night before I decorate each order. Then fill and crumb coat in the afternoon....if fondant, then ice as well....then fondant and decorate in the evening. You can refrigerate the cake for a few days before delivery if necessary as well. A nice cold cake travels well. If it is VERY humid and warm, the cake may sweat a bit but if you take it from an a/c house to an ice cold a/c car to a nice a/c venue, it will be fine.

thanks for the reply. I have read on some forums that if you frig a cake with fondant that it does not do well. When you frig a cake with fondant how to you store the cake?

I always refrigerate all my cakes. Learned it at an upscale catering place I worked at. The only problem I've had so far was the other day some of my hand drawn designs started to bleed just a TINY bit, but it was so humid outside it was like a sauna, and the room I delivered the cake to was not very cool. Otherwise I have great success. And any wetness that does get on the fondant from the air will dry back out. Its better your fondant gets a tiny bit damp and dries out, than for the entire cake to crack or collapse!

I actually have three refrigerators, two of which are mostly for my cakes (I store cake supplies and then Cokes in them, but otherwise just cake stuff go in them, no leftovers or anything that smells). So I just put my cakes in there until delivery/pickup time. I had several SCARY cake deliveries before I got my fridges, and started keeping all my cakes in there.