I am new at this. I have been doing cakes for birthdays and such, but I want to expand. I want to make a birthday cake for my daughter's first birthday and I have the design I want, but want to know what others do to prepare their baked cake before they frost it. Any ideas would be appreciated.
It depends on what you are trying to do. There are a lot of different things people do to prepare the cake - e.g.:
- some people freeze their cakes after baking; claim it makes them moister (personally, I have not noticed a difference)
- apply a simple sugar syrup to the top of the cake
- torte, level and add filling
- crumb coat
- etc...
Is this the type of information you are looking for?
If I have time, I freeze. It helps spread my cake time over a few days instead of crammed into one. While I personally find it does improve in the moistness, I prefer it because it firms the cake up for easier handling.
I remove from the freezer a few hours or the morning of (if I remember) and defrost on the counter. The refrigerator will actually dry out your unfrosted cakes so it seems counter-intuitive to me to defrost in there.
If I have time, I freeze. It helps spread my cake time over a few days instead of crammed into one. While I personally find it does improve in the moistness, I prefer it because it firms the cake up for easier handling.
I remove from the freezer a few hours or the morning of (if I remember) and defrost on the counter. The refrigerator will actually dry out your unfrosted cakes so it seems counter-intuitive to me to defrost in there.
Aswartzw - I'd be interested in understanding why defrosting in the fridge dries out your cake - its still wrapped (wouldn't that be the same as keeping a decorated cake in the fridge when you have perishable fillings). Do you know the reason behind this? TIA.
I froze my cake, for a few days because I've been so busy, and I took it out today. It was so good and moist. I wrapped it in parchment paper and it was great. The only problem I had was when I iced it, the brown crumbles from the chocolate mixed in with the icing. How do I prevent that?
Hi Jayceem and welcome to CC!
Try doing a crumb coat first. This is a very thin layer of thinned bc icing which should seal in the crumbs from your cake. I usually bake, cool, fill and crumb coat the cake the night before and refriderate it. This will give the cake time to settle as well and will give you the opportunity to take care of any bulging issues etc. When you do ice the cake make sure you do not disturb the crumb coat otherwise you will have "crumbs" in your icing.
HTH!
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