i have never frozen my cake layers before, but I have a wedding cake to make and fly to KC, so I bakes some of the layers last week and popped them in the freezer. 

Last night I started filling and frosting. Anyway, on one of my cakes, two layers were frozen and one was freshly baked. when I stacked them I realized that the frozen cakes were much smaller than the fresh. So I got out my ruler and, sure enough, the frozen cakes were 1/2 an inch smaller. 

Since they shrink 1/2 inch in the pan, I now have cakes that are 1 inch smaller than the original sizes. i'm so frustrated! I had to cut down all my boards and i'm seriously concerned because I was planning on freezing the lot before putting it all in a box to carry on the plane. 

will the cake further shrink under the fondant?? I'm also worried that i won't have enough servings. 

jen

UGH, I agree….frozen cakes do shrink a lot! I haven't noticed any more shrinking after they come out of the freezer under something like fondant though, to answer your question. 

I don't know your recipe, but I have to say that I'm really surprised to hear that your cakes shrink half an inch at room temp and another 1/2 inch after freezing.  To me, that would indicate an awful lot of air in the baked cake or that it's somewhat over baked [dehydrated].

When I bake, my cakes pull away from the pan, but they're not much smaller than the pan at this point.  I freeze all of my layers and when I put them on cake boards cut to the size of the pan, I'd say that I have about 1/4th of an inch all the way around.  I use this as my guide for my buttercream layer.

I'm saying that I don't think a baked cake should be 1/2 an inch smaller than the pan right after baking [or routine cooling on the counter]. 

My own experience is that if I leave my cake bake too long, only then is it that small when it comes out of the oven.

I have minimal shrinkage after freezing--just enough for a proper buttercream layer, only--which I see as just another benefit of freezing.