I started baking around 4pm yesterday afternoon. I'm using WASC recipe and need many layers. I had to end my baking last night before I had all my cakes baked. I poured my unused cake batter into a freezer bag and placed in freezer last night. This morning I took batter out of freezer (which wasn't froze solid, guess because of the ingredients) and placed on counter to thaw. In a bit I'm going to start baking again with the batter I froze last night. Is this okay? I don't want my customers to get sick!

Thanks,
Kim

Your customers shouldn't get sick, but you may not get the cake quality that you desire.

I would never recommend freezing cake batter. I wouldn't even recommend holding cake batter for a period of more than 30 minutes to 1 hour before baking. Baking is about chemical reactions. Your leavening (single action) is dead within about 2 hours of mixing with wet ingredients. Your double acting leavening will give you some rise when it is heated, but not nearly what you need to achieve the right density for your cakes.

Edited to add: This website from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, College of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Services says that you can freeze batters with double-acting baking soda for up to 2 months. http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/vista/html_pubs/freezing/freezing.html

I've frozen WASC cake batter using DH cake mix. It was frozen for over 6 months...........and the cake baked up beautifully.

I defrosted the batter in the fridge overnight and then let it come close to room temp before putting it in the oven.

It baked in normal time. It was a little sticky on the top, but I leveled it and the texture & flavor were great.

Not my preferred way of baking, but it saved me wasting a full batch of ingredients.

HTH
Rae

I've frozen batter in the pan and taken it from freezer to oven and it baked up fine. I also store batter in my 'frig for days and it bakes up fine (white cake is from a box; my chocolate is from scratch. Both bake up fine.)

My question is why would you freeze the batter if you were going to use it the next day? why not just refrigerate it?

Thanks everyone for your input! I finished baking them today. indydebi, I figured the fridge would be okay but, since this cake is being purchased I went for the freezer thinking it would be safest. I don't want to get any of my customers sick so, I go a little over board with freezing, refridgerating, cleaning, not re-using... if anyone gets sick it wouldn't be good.

Thanks!

Erring on the side of caution is rarely a bad thing!

I'm so glad I saw this I was wondering if refridgerating cake batter was ok as well but I see it is!

Debi,

That's my SIL who posted this question (hi Kim!).
She called and asked me this question - I told her I didn't know but I remembered the expert on CC (that would be you!) once posted that you could freeze batter.

Thanks for replying to the question so she could get it directly from the expert herself!

Kim - good luck with your cake!

Nicole,

Thanks for introducing this site to me. It's great! When I spoke with you the other day I thought I had made too much batter. Not. I 4x's the WASC recipe and baked 3 2in 10s, 3 2in 8s and 1 2in 6! And I was worried about having extra and not wanting to waste it, lol. To entertain I will tell you the entire whole story. To make things easier, or so I thought it would make my life easier, I went a head Thursday and wrote the WASC recipe out doubled so I wouldn't have to figure anything in my head. Anyway, when I started to make my batter I was trying to tell my husband to go back to his room because he was sick and I didn't want the children to catch what he had. My husband is trying to tell me he wasn't sick, this is while he is sneezing, blowing his nose every 5 mins and coughing. So, I forgot I had already doubled my recipe on paper and didn't figure out anything was wrong until I realized I had only 2 boxes of cake mix but, after I had already added 4 cups of flour and 4 cups of sugar. Well, in order not waste all that I had already mixed I just 4x's the recipe the rest of the way. I had so much cake batter I had to mix it in one of my big pots (the huge one I steam crab legs in) with my hand mixer. If the customers only knew how much work really went into cake baking and decorating!

~Kim