Hi,

I'm a working mother and I will be making a princess (barbie) cake and a castle cake for my daughter's birthday on Sat. I will be using a buttercream frosting. I am obviously an amatuer cake decorator , therefore I'm slow when it comes to decorating. How far ahead of time can I make my cakes? Can I refrigerate the completed cake? If so, will it need to be covered? Do I have to worry about color changes etc.?

Thanks so much!

Kekecakes

Pinks and Purples and Blues are good to change a shade or so , just make it darker than you want. I bake on Thurs to decorate on Fri for Sat. If you want you could bake it on Wed crumbcoat it and put in the fridge then Thurs and Fri decorate. I would suggest that if it were me doing it. Or do it all and refridgerate it but me I still wouldn't do it more than 4 days in advance. Buttercream lasts good no problem , but I worry about the cakes freshness. Have fun!!!!!

Or you can freeze the cake and pull it out to decorate then put it finished in the refidge that's a thought too. Yellow and chocolate cake also strawberry freezes well for me. I think my white is drier but no one else does. Customers do not know the difference, they are so used to dry store bought cakes. I do fresh UNLESS I'm in a busy season.

I decorate cakes at home but also work in a supermarket bakery. All of our cakes come in frozen and we decorate them in the store. Sometimes we decorate the quarter sheets then put them in a freezer for display because the shelf life is longer. So you could, for time's sake, decorate and freeze for a day or two. The cake doesn't take long to thaw, about an hour or so. I have found that some frostings crack when refrigerated too long. My swiss buttercream kept cracking when I took the cake out of the fridge. I've also used a white chocolate mousse-like frosting which cracked too. Good luck!

kekecakes- I also work full time and make cakes as a hobby, I make all accents extra bits for the cake thru the week than I bake thursday evening, torte and crumb coat if I have time (torte and crumb coat friday otherwise), then ice and decorate friday evening ready for saturday. HTH good luck