Fellow Bakers,

I have a coupe of questions for all of you that make your cakes from scratch. I am beginning to experiment with scratch cakes again as I am tired of the "chemical" taste in my doctored vanilla cake. There is just one thing that concerns me. How long can you keep at scratch cake at room temperature? I only refrigerate my cake if its SMBC so that it travels well. Other than that, my cakes are never refrigerated or frozen. If I have a cake for Saturday/Sunday, I bake Thursday. Fill, ice, and decorate on Friday, deliver on Saturday. 

I plan on using simple syrup on the scratch cake to see it most. Please share your knowledge with me! If this helps, I will be using Liz Marek's (Artisan Cake Company) vanilla cake recipe.

Thank you all!!

Scratch cakes last just as long as box, at room temp, as long as the actual cake is air tight.  They don't really go bad.  Just like boxed, they will just eventually get stale.  

Liz Marek's recipe is a butter based recipe so it will actually do better at room temp.  If you do refrigerate it for delivery, just make your clients aware that they need to let it come to room temp for optimal flavor/texture.  When butter based cakes are refrigerated, the butter solidifies, as it is cold-which will make the cake seem hard or dry.  Just be aware that, if your cake is covered in fondant, it will take quite a while to get to room temp because the fondant acts as an insulation.

I've recently re-vamped all my recipes and I have now have two recipes for each flavor.  One butter recipe for carving, etc.  And, one oil based recipe for cakes that need to be refrigerated because of the filling.

I bake everything from scratch, don't freeze or refrigerate until they're decorated, and have the same baking/decorating schedule that you do, so that will work fine.