Preparing Cake Layers in Advance
As much as I love the idea of baking and decorating a cake from start to finish in one day, its almost always impractical for my busy life. In order to create the most of my time after work, or a few pockets of hours between commitments, I bake my cake layers ahead of time and freeze them for later use.
Keep reading to learn all my tips and tricks for preparing your cake layers in advance!
Things You Will Need:
plastic wrap
butter knife
How To:
As soon as the cakes come out of the oven, run a butter knife along the circumference of the cake.
Place the cake with the cake pan in the freezer for about 15 minutes. The cake pan should be cool to touch when properly chilled.
Remove the cake pans from the freezer.
Lay out a piece of plastic wrap.
Pop the cake out of the cake pan and place the bottom on the plastic wrap.
Using a cake leveler, level your cakes so you have a flat cake top. You can also use a serrated knife. Just make sure to keep your hand stable.
Fold the plastic wrap in from the sides, and cover the cake layer completely in plastic wrap.
Place the cake layer on a large plate or a cake board and place it in the freezer for up to 2 weeks!
Tips:
Before adding the batter, grease your cake pans and use parchment paper when baking to make it easier to remove the cake from the pan.
When folding the plastic wrap, only fold on top of the cake layer and don’t wrap around to the bottom. If you wrap around to the bottom, you risk your cake layer not cooling flat.
To prevent the cake from sliding during leveling, I place the plastic wrap on a silicone mat so there is absolutely no movement as I cut the top off the cake.
