Can I Leave An Iced Cake Out? Ants?
Decorating By kellertur Updated 6 Aug 2008 , 4:50am by Texas_Rose
I am making a cake for a customer who lives across the street but won't be home until Sunday morning. I was hoping to drop it off Saturday night when I feed the cat, so it's a surprise when their 2 teenage sons get home. (We live in Maine, it does get humid, but this week isn't bad.)
Will ants get into a boxed cake? Should I wrap the box in saran wrap? or try to squeeze it into their fridge?
thanks 
Do they have a problem with ants? I have left cake for my family on my counter and never had trouble with ants. (I live in Virginia). If you are concerned I would try to put it in the fridge unless it's covered in fondant. If so, wrap it really well in plastic wrap and hope for the best.
About the ants, it's hard to tell... I haven't seen any, but...
It will have fondant accents but mainly BC. I guess I just felt funny going into their fridge without asking, weird as that sounds. Maybe I'll try that anyway... it would stink to have ants get into the cake or have the cat (who is a menace) jump on it. He's always on the counters.
thanks for the help- please add more if you have any...
I have a major ant problem in my house. Every day I kill at least 500 ants (with windex, isn't that weird) and every day there are more. Anyhow, they can get into a box. They will even crawl all over a bag until they find a tiny ant-sized hole to get in.
The oven is safe from ants, but the microwave isn't. My best trick so far for keeping something safe from ants is to put it on a wire shelf (the cupboard kind, about 6 inches tall) and put the legs of the wire shelf into a pan of water.
I would wrap the box in Saran wrap. It couldn't hurt...and I think it would help keep the cake fresh too.
Texas_Rose--
Another Texan here. I had a problem with piss-ants (I think the proper name is pharoah ants). Anyway--we are on a quarterly extermination schedule and still had them. My DH says it was because I always had sugar somewhere on the counter. Then they were in the shower--no sugar there!
I would wipe the counters and walls down with anything with orange oil in it and it would keep them away for almost a week. Hubby researched it on the web and found that you had to get rid of any kind of food source outside--bird feeders, bread put out for birds and hummingbird feeders--anything that attracts ant. Much to my dismay, we got rid of all that and no more problems with ants.
sprinkle some ajax on the counter. So long as the cake is in a box and saran wrapped it should get contaminated. I learned this from a health inspector
I too would be more worried about the cat jumping on it... I would stick it in the oven with a HUGE note that says OPEN for a SURPRISE right over the oven controls (no missing that)... and also leave a note telling them to look in the oven somewhere they will see when they first walk in the door...
That is what I would do!
My best trick so far for keeping something safe from ants is to put it on a wire shelf (the cupboard kind, about 6 inches tall) and put the legs of the wire shelf into a pan of water.
Funny I do this too. Probably wouldn't work for the OP since the cat problem.
We have the itty bitty ants that love sweets and eggs. I have to clean the legs of the table so it erases the trail scent.
good luck in whatever you choose
Texas_Rose--
Another Texan here. I had a problem with piss-ants (I think the proper name is pharoah ants). Anyway--we are on a quarterly extermination schedule and still had them. My DH says it was because I always had sugar somewhere on the counter. Then they were in the shower--no sugar there!
I would wipe the counters and walls down with anything with orange oil in it and it would keep them away for almost a week. Hubby researched it on the web and found that you had to get rid of any kind of food source outside--bird feeders, bread put out for birds and hummingbird feeders--anything that attracts ant. Much to my dismay, we got rid of all that and no more problems with ants.
LOL, we call them piss-ants too 
I live in an apartment so I can't eliminate the food sources outside, but that's really good advice that I will use as soon as I get out of apartment hell. For now, I think I'm going to have to give up and let the exterminator spray inside my apartment. I've been resisting because of the fragile creatures (birds, fish and kids) that I have, but the ants have ruined so much of our food that I'm getting fed up. It's weird, I've lived in two other buildings here in the complex and never had bug problems...but I've got ants and spiders here. I had to kill a tarantula the other night so I could get out to go to Taco Cabana. It was sitting on my doorstep and when I would open the door it would raise itself up on its legs to look bigger. I had to throw out the Yellow Pages when I was done, they were coated in tarantula juice.
What's bad is that it was probably someone's pet, but I was too scared to try to rescue it and search for the rightful owner ( I did tell the complex manager the next day that if anyone had lost their pet tarantula, they were SOL). It was too big for a shoe too, I have the biggest feet in my family and my shoes didn't seem big enough for the job. Mostly the reason that I killed it was because I didn't want to lose sight of it and wonder where it had gone, and our walls apparently aren't that tight here. I had to kill a black widow a few months ago too, my kids spilled milk on the rug they were sitting on, so I flipped it up to blot the carpet underneath, and there was a black widow right there.
I just looked up wood spider...yuck!!! I don't blame you for passing out!
I have a major ant problem in my house. Every day I kill at least 500 ants (with windex, isn't that weird) and every day there are more. Anyhow, they can get into a box. They will even crawl all over a bag until they find a tiny ant-sized hole to get in.
I'm in Austin and I've had terrible problems with the Pharaoh/sugar ants this season - until I discovered
Yes, I'm hi-jacking the thread--but just one more spider story.
Hubby and I go to Orange Beach, AL every summer (the last 6 yrs). The first year we went, we decided to go to the Bon Secour Wildlife trail--hoping to see some indigenous wildlife.
Well, they had these HUGE yellow and black spiders that made their webs from bush to bush. OK--took pictures, they were there, I was over here. No sweat. Continued on--got halfway thru the trail--hubby grabbed me by the neck of my shirt and yanked me backwards. But not before I walked right into a huge web that stretched across the trail.
I started hyper-ventilating and flapping my arms trying to get it off of me. Hubby was hollering at me to calm down...said if I passed out, he was leaving me there. Hid behind him until he got me out of there.
OK--now back to your regularly scheduled program
LOL...I'll share one last one too.
I had gone for a walk with my boyfriend (this was back in high school) and it started raining, so we waited out the rain in an old stone tower. I was wearing those thin nylon gym shorts and a thong...very airy, kept me cool while walking. Well, some spider crawled up my shorts and bit me on the butt. It hurt, and it swelled up so bad that my boyfriend had to just about carry me home. And then when I got home, I showed my mom because the bite had turned into a deep red area about 8" long and 5" across (did I mention that even back then I had a big butt? ). It hurt like nothing I'd ever felt before. My mom looked at it and said that I couldn't have been bitten if I hadn't been wearing my clothes like a nice girl, and that it would be God's punishment if I died from it.
So I went to sleep with an icepack on it, and the next day I had to go to school and explain why I couldn't fit in my uniform slacks that day or sit down, all day long.
My mom told me later that if you're going to die from a spider bite, it happens in the first 15 minutes after you're bitten, and that's why she wouldn't take me to the hospital. Now, as a mom myself, I know there's medicine to help with allergic reactions like that, and I would have benefitted from a trip to the doctor...but oh well.
Okay, I'm done hijacking the thread...I promise 
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%