Hi
Can someone tell me how long a cake is good for after being baked/decorated before it should be thrown out. Do fruit fillings/buttercreams add to a shorter shelflife? I always store any uneaten cake in the fridge.
thanks.

It completely depends on the type of cake, filling, icing, and how it is stored.

But as a general rule of thumb i don't like a cake sitting out more than 4-5 days (although not sure one even last that long around here)

I mostly use modified box mixes with a standard american buttercream and non-perishable fillings.

I actually tested this one time, we had half of a full sheet cake (portions already cut and eaten) just sitting in a box with a lid on the counter...........we ate from the cake for a full week before it started to dry out, then I moved it to the garage and studied it. It took 2 months before any mold actually formed on it (pretty crazy), and the icing still looked normal even though there was mold, but the cake itself still appeared to be fine on the inside.

I would NEVER serve a customer a cake that was more than a day or two old (freshly baked for them), but you can certainly hang onto a covered cake for close to a week easily. If you think it will take longer than that to eat, then just freeze a portion of it. If the cake is uncut it will last much longer...............AND unless there is a persishable filling, I wouldn't refrigerate since that tends to dry out the cakes quicker.

ditto KHalstead

Unless a cake has a perishable filling, refrigerating is a terrible thing to do to a cake.

wow. i always assumed because there are eggs, maybe sourcream or milk depending on the recipe that cake should be refrigerated. i get the part about fruit fillings though.

yep, it has to do with the ratio of fats to sugars or something, basically there is so much sugar that bacteria has a very hard time of living in there!