Making cakes in advance

[sanityawol]

We have an open day at work on Saturday, and I have been given the honour of making the cakes for the day.

It will be a mix of basic vanilla sponge fairy / cup cakes with a butter cream topping, a couple of lemon drizzle tray bakes and a couple of coffee and walnut tray bakes. All sponge based really.

Normally this question wouldn't occur to me as I would make the cakes the night before, then get up early and decorate on Saturday but I have some spare time tonight.

Do you think I could get away with baking them tonight and icing tomorrow? Might leave the lemon drizzle until tomorrow but would be good to get a head start on the others.

I'm also doing a vegan fruit cake thing, but that only takes 5 minutes to sling together.

Many thanks

Do you have room to stick them in the freezer? Otherwise if you have a large airtight tub you could use that. I think you should be fine, but don't put the buttercream on until the day they will be eaten (although you could make it up in advance and stick in the fridge)

Thanks for the reply.

I've got a couple of hundred to do so not enough room in freezer... Wish I did, I'd have made them at the weekend.

But I've just been and raided my mum's cupboards for containers, so I have plenty with of food storage boxes with lids to put them in.

Not quite sure how I've managed to get ahead of myself for once.

Cupcakes will be fine if made tonight and kept in an airtight container until tomorrow. Lemon drizzle always tastes better if the flavours can develop over day or so (never happens in our house!) so if you can do the lemon drizzle ones tonight and wrap in clingflim once cool then slice on the day, it would be the better option. But no-one is going to notice if cakes were made tonight and stored well, iced tomorrow.

Excellent... exactly the answers I hoped for. I still have to work as normal this week, so I've got to bake in the evenings.

blueberry I have the same problem with most cake, but especially lemon drizzle here too. I don't usually worry about baking a couple of days in advance for my lot - just started to question myself because they'll be being eaten by strangers.