How far in advance can I make a birthday cake

[generousoffer]

I'm planning to make a birthday cake for DD's party on Saturday.

But I'm out on Friday and at work all week so ideally need to make it on Wednesday and decorate (cover in fondant icing) on Thursday.

Will the cake be OK for that long? Or do I need to cancel my night out and make it all on Friday night?

I think that sounds fine, sponge cake might not be quite a fresh but certainly not stale. Will also be a lot easier to ice!

IMO Birthday cakes matter far more on how they look than how they taste!!

What would happen of I froze it. Would that be worse?

Presumably it would have to defrost before icing.

If you use a madeira receipe (or mud cake if you're doing chocolate) it will last for two weeks, so a couple of days would be fine. Keep it cold but don't refrigerate it after you've put the fondant on, otherwise you'll get condensation on the fondant and it'll ruin it. The best thing to do would be to make it as planned, buttercream it, then put it in the fridge till the next day. Let me know if you'd like a reliable recipe

It would be fine frozen un-iced.

MyCatHasStaff I'd like a good madeira recipe. The one time I've made it it came out quite dry. Or is it supposed to be that way so that it keeps for so long?

No shouldn't be dry, give me 10 mins - do you want a pm or just here?

What size/shape would you normally use (for quantities)?

This is a lovely moist cake.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10860/easy-vanilla-cake

Because you feed it with the vanilla syrup it's very moist, but it's heavier than sponge so good for making birthday cakes. It freezes well in my experience.

wem just had a look at your fabulous cakes! You are very talented The recipes I use are from this book I'm still happy to send you the receipe but I suspect you could make good use of the book! The mudcake is from that book too. Sometimes I use a vanilla syrup if I want a very moist finish, but not always hth

Thanks MyCat, I'd love the receipe if that's ok, either here or pm. I'm just starting out so I don't have a size I 'normally' use yet, is 8" fairly standard? I'll put the book on my wishlist, but I'm trying to limit my spending on cakes atm, I've gone a bit crazy with it recently! Your cakes are brilliant too, I'm amazed by all the creativity I've found since I got interested in this business :)

And thanks for the link GrownUp, that looks great too.

OK, because I'm an idiot I can't work out how to PM you. So here's the quantities for 8" round:
250g each of butter and sugar
5 eggs
185 g plain flour
60g s/r flour
1 tblspn milk
Oven 160 (315/gm 2-3)
Bake for 1h 25min

Thanks MyCat, I'll be giving it a go before too long I'm sure. Sorry for the hijack OP :)