How Early Can You Make a Wedding Cake?

How Early Can You Make a Wedding Cake?
Published: Aug 13, 2010
Updated: Jan 10, 2019
1 minute read
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wedding cake. image by guiney from Fotolia.com

Cake Keeps Refrigerated for Seven Days

If properly refrigerated, the cake itself as well as buttercream and cream cheese frosting will keep for up to seven days. Any cake can be baked a week in advance, and if using one of these types of frosting, it can be frosted and decorated as well, so long as it is kept refrigerated between 30 and 45 degrees F.

Fondant Should Never be Refrigerated

If you plan to decorate your cake with fondant icing—a thick sugar paste—decorate the cake within a day or two of the wedding. Homemade fondant has a shelf life of about three days unrefrigerated. If you refrigerate or freeze fondant, it will crack and be ruined.

Bottom Line

It is always safe to bake the cake up to a week in advance and refrigerate it in the meantime. However, how far in advance you can decorate the cake depends on what type of frosting or icing you plan to use.

Photo Credits

wedding cake. image by guiney from Fotolia.com

Shannon M. Beck

Shannon Beck is a communications specialist and journalist living in central Missouri. She received her education in journalism through Missouri State University and has worked for numerous news outlets in Missouri over the last decade.

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