Hi everyone! I am starting my bakery and am talking to the guy from the department of agriculture and we've decided the best way for me to go is to try to use shelf stable frosting. I am looking into have the water activity tested on my frostings, but it might be easier to just make shelf stable frostings. Any tips? Has anyone used the pre-packaged frostings from companies such as Bakemark or Puratos? If you have, how do they taste? Thank you!

I don't think I've ever heard of the department of agriculture getting involved in starting a bakery. Regardless, you should use recipes that people enjoy.

I'm assuming that you already have some customers who enjoy the cakes that you've done in the past?

Yeah, in the state of Oregon, the department of agriculture licenses all businesses relating to food. My issue I'm running into is refrigerated space since I'm using a rental kitchen and they don't have a ton of fridge space, so using shelf stable frostings would be ideal, but people love what I've done so far. I'm sending it in for a water activity test and if it passes, I can use it, but those tests aren't cheap! .