If you can, I'd go ahead and put your base coat of frosting on them and decorate later in the week. In my experience, that's the best way to seal in the moisture...
I froze cakes for the first time a couple of weeks ago. I spent over an hour and a half reading through all the old posts about freezing cakes. I basically got the following info.
1) Bake the cakes
2) Cool the cakes
3) Apply simple syrup - 1 cup water & 1/2 cup sugar, warmed.
4) Wrap cakes in saran wrap
5) Wrap double layer of foil around cakes
6) Place in freezer and take out the freezer the morning of wanting to decorate (I decorated after work).
They were so moist and nobody could tell I had froze them a week before.
HTH
I have a question on those syrups.....do you always use them, even on doctored cake mix cakes? Can you use the bottled flavored syrups I find at the grocery store (like blueberry, etc) instead of the water/syrup mix? Won't be freezing my cakes, but wondered about this.
Not really always. Just depends on the "moisture" and "flavor" level in the cake.
But, on the wedding cakes (small ones--I'm not the artist some of you are!) I cater, I always use a syrup. I try to pick a "colorful" one, for lack of better terms. Like--if I'm making a white cake, I'll flavor the cake with almond and then spray it with raspberry before filling with a white chocolate raspberry filling.
But, on a kid's birthday cake, depending on the cake flavor, I won't usually doctor that as much.
I'm sure you could use those syrups from the store. They're the same thing, with preservatives/color....hmmm...all kinds of ideas swirling in my lil' southern head now...hmmm
Hope this helps!
--Knox--
I think the flavored syrups they're talking about are the ones you can buy in the coffee isle of the grocery store. They're usually on the top shelf in big glass bottles. I always used the vanilla one to make vanilla coke because if you just put plain vanilla in a coke it tastes nasty.
Yeah, the coffee syrups would work ok, but they'd get expensive on you!
I'd probably just do the simple syrup recipe (takes a while to get it down--mine sugared up on me 'til I learned to JUST melt the sugar) with some flavoring/color added. Like with the raspberry--I color that one pink. Almond--I leave clear. Butter I leave clear, etc.
I store mine in glass in the fridge. I spray mine on. My DH had his buddy get me the proper spray nozzles to fit the bottles. You can spoon it on if you didn't want to spray, but caution is in order--don't soak the cake--accent the cake!
Yes, I spray them on before crumb coating--not too much, though--you won't be able to get any icing on there if you over load the cake with the spray!
The effect you're going for is to "hint" of the flavor/color, not overpower.
I hope this helps!
--Knox--
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