Ok, Help Me Out Here With Baking And Making Timeline!
Decorating By kstgelais4 Updated 27 Apr 2006 , 5:01pm by elvis
I have never made 2 cakes in a weekend (I'm a novice OK
) So anyways, I have 2 stacked cakes, one on Sat, and one on Sun. So where do I start, can I bake them and then refridgerate, or do I freeze? How far in advance can I decorate them? I just have no idea how to organize this? TIA!
Kelly
Depends on how much time you want to spend at any one time. I work full time & bake & decorate after workig a full day. So I might bake one cake on Monday & freeze, bake the next on tuesday & freeze, make frosting on wed, crumb coat both on thursday night & decorate both friday night. That way I'm done except for getting them picked up.
Hope this helps.
i am going to bump you too....
I am learning all this stuff also...
it would be nice if somebody could give a rough timeline of their week prior to presenting the cake....
thanks....
Well, I have 4 little ones at home, so I can only do a little at a time. A couple hours a night is ok. So do you thaw completely before crumbcoating? Do you refrigerate after that? Sorry for all the ??'s. Thanks.
Kelly
I have a 2year old and a 4 year old and I bake on a mon, tues or wed or thur whatever suits you, freeze and then defrost early am on the day I decorate which is almost always the day before collection. If need be it can be 2 or 3 days prior, just work around your life, the cake will be fine.
I decorate for 2-3 hours while my 2year old naps but used to decorate only at night after the kids were in bed.
see what works best for your life schedule and work around it!
I just did my first wedding cake- 4 tiers and here is what I did (I work fulltime and have 4 children at home also!). I baked the two largest tiers (2 layers each) - 12" and 14" the week before the event, then triple wrapped them in plastic, foil and on a cake board and then in a non-scented garbage bag, and froze them. I baked tier number 3 (10", 2 layers) on Wed. night before and froze the same way and then the smallest tier (8"- 2 layers) on Thursday night and did not freeze. I took Friday off work to decorate for the reception on Saturday. I took the frozen cakes out of the freezer and left the wrappings on them for about an hour, made my frosting, then unwrapped them- they weren't completely thawed, but that worked out good, they were easier to place on top of each other after I filled them and didn't crack. I then crumb coated and let them all sit for about an hour (probably didn't have to leave that long, but I was doing some laundry too) I then put the final layer of frosting on them, smoothed as good as I could get them and let them sit out to crust over. I did not assemle and pipe borders or put decorations on them until I got to the reception hall. That worked out well- just remember to take extra frosting, powdered sugar, extra bags, tips and accessories for any unexpected mishaps. Good Luck! 
When I have a lot of cakes to do for a weekend, I will bake on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. Then I will decorate on Thursday and Friday.
so how long do the cakes "have" to thaw? IF I bake today and freeze should I take out tomorrow morn or afternoon. maybe my question is how long does it take for a cake to thaw?
I always freeze my cakes because it makes them easier to stack and frost. In my experience (which, I'm pretty new to this too) - the cakes thaw pretty quickly. I think most of the time, they are ready to roll after an hour at room temp but you may want to assume it will take a couple of hours to be on the safe side.
It always takes me a couple of hours to decorate a cake anyway and so I've never really had to worry about the cake not being thawed by party time. Good luck!
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