Freezing cakes and vacuum packing them

[Franci]

Do you do it? I sometimes don't feel like eating that much cake and often portion it,  freeze it wrapped in plastic wrap and then foil or ziplock bags and generally eat within 10 days or 2 weeks at most. I was thinking of vacuum sealing the frozen cake slices to extend the keeping time. How long can you keep cakes this way?

I'm speaking of cake without filling or frosting of course. Any tips?

[lesliec]

Hi Franci.

 

My favourite fruitcake recipe makes anough for two 'normal' sized cakes, so I generally freeze one.  I just wrap it securely in two layers of foil - no plastic, no vacuum seal - and it keeps successfully for a couple of weeks (I haven't tested it longer than that; once Cake 1 is finished I need Cake 2 immediately!).

 

You're talking about slices, though, rather than whole cakes, so sealing may well help keep them fresh longer.  If you're using a chamber you'd want to watch the vacuum level to avoid squashing the slices, but a FoodSaver type should be fine.

 

Or ... just eat it faster!

[DianaM]

Yes, I do it too. I always do it when I need to make a cake for someone for a deadline, to avoid having to scramble on the last day. Then the power goes out, and you're fresh outta luck. So to avoid these crises, I make the cake layers and freeze them for a few days, until I am assembling the cake.

Plastic wrap will do, but I like better the "press and seal" type wrap, it does not squish the cakes' sides. I have never packed in vacuum, as I don't have the right equipment. But I'd be worried about crushing the cakes if I used it, particularly for more fragile ones. Fruitcakes perhaps lend themselves to vacuum packing, but a tender butter cake... maybe not so much. Just speculating, I have not tested this.

Once I froze a filled and frosted cake. It was a small, 6-inch chocolate cake filled and frosted in buttercream. I made it as an experiment, to see if it could be frozen like that (or rather, if after thawing it, it would still be decent). And it was decent, both the cake and the buttercream (Swiss meringue) were ok.

[Kerry Beal]

I routinely vacuum pack my fruitcakes.  They are already dense and vacuum sealing doesn't hurt them a bit.  I would not hesitate to leave them in the freezer for a year or more.

[quiet1]

When I lived alone and away from friends and family, I portioned cake and froze the slices fairly often so I could have a treat now and then without being tempted to eat the whole cake before it went bad. Success is mostly down to the type of cake and filling/frosting. Pastry cream and fresh fruits don't do so well. (I have a cake I make with whipped cream frosting, pastry cream filling, and slices of fresh strawberries between the layers. This is not a cake that will freeze happily.)

Anything kind of simple or dense did fine, though - cake iced with a plain buttercream, chocolate cake with ganache, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, etc. I will confess to never doing a side by side comparison - I would not be surprised if the frozen and thawed slice was not quite as perfect as the freshly made - but certainly good enough to enjoy a nice slice of cake as a treat. (Even with any freezer related quality issues, it was still much tastier than anything I could buy locally.)

My method was to portion the whole cake then freeze the whole thing unwrapped for a couple of hours or so, until the outsides of each portion had frozen enough that they wouldn't be damaged by wrapping. Wrap each in plastic wrap, then depending on how robust the wrapped pieces felt, either freeze overnight wrapped individually (so they'd be more robust) or go right to packaging in an additional airtight container. (Bag, sealed box, whatever works for your freezer organization.) Then just leave in the freezer and pull an individual piece or two as needed.

To thaw, unwrap portions immediately (before the icing defrosts and sticks to the plastic wrap) and thaw in the fridge or at room temp depending on preference and type of cake. (Denser cakes I tended to do in the fridge because they take longer. A regular American birthday cake type thing with buttercream, on the other hand, will often warm to a nice eating temperature if you just leave it at room temperature while eating the rest of the meal, at least with the normal room temperatures I had in the UK.) I never had much trouble with humidity and condensation, but that would be something to keep an eye on when choosing your defrosting methods.

I've actually been pondering doing something similar lately even though I now have enough people around to finish a full cake, but with cupcakes or mini cupcakes. My housemates are trying to teach their kid moderation and good eating habits, but he does have a sweet tooth. A mini cupcake or two (depending on exactly how mini) seem like they might be less tempting for a kid re: portion control than a normal sized slice of cake. Plus it'll probably be easier to get him involved in making them because it's easier to have more than one person working on cupcakes than on a single cake, and I'm trying to make sure he thinks of cooking as a thing that he can do if he has the interest. (As opposed to cooking being a magic thing that happens. He doesn't have to actually love cooking like I do, that's fine, but he shouldn't be afraid to give it a try if at any point he has something he wants to make.)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I routinely vacuum pack my fruitcakes.  They are already dense and vacuum sealing doesn't hurt them a bit.  I would not hesitate to leave them in the freezer for a year or more.

 

When I used to make fruitcakes (1970's) I would marinate them in Lemon Hart 151.  I did not hesitate to leave them at room temperature for a year or more...or at least for several months.

[Kerry Beal]

When I used to make fruitcakes (1970's) I would marinate them in Lemon Hart 151.  I did not hesitate to leave them at room temperature for a year or more...or at least for several months.

 

Dark fruitcake always got the wrap in cheesecloth/soaked in booze treatment - these days I make a white one.  

[pastrygirl]

I routinely vacuum pack my fruitcakes.  They are already dense and vacuum sealing doesn't hurt them a bit.  I would not hesitate to leave them in the freezer for a year or more.

But less dense cakes like most butter cakes and sponge cakes may suffer from too much compression in the vacuum. A strong vacuum will pull all the air out of the cake. I would just wrap well and skip the vacuum.

[Kerry Beal]

Yeah - I'd never vacuum seal anything less dense than fruit cake - tried it with bread once.  Epic fail.  

[cakewalk]

I freeze cakes all the time. I don't vacuum seal, just wrap well in plastic and then foil. I've never frozen anything with filling or frosting, just loaf cakes, pound cakes, etc. I've kept them in the freezer for months (sometimes I forget about them), and they've been fine. I also sometimes mix and then freeze the batter in a zip lock bag. When I want to use it I let it defrost overnight in the fridge and then pour it into a baking pan in the morning. Works beautifully.

[quiet1]

But less dense cakes like most butter cakes and sponge cakes may suffer from too much compression in the vacuum. A strong vacuum will pull all the air out of the cake. I would just wrap well and skip the vacuum.

I'd be interested to see the results of vacuum packing a pre-frozen piece of butter cake. I feel like it would compress even with being frozen, but if you have control over the strength of the vacuum you could probably manage it, at least within a range of final product that is acceptable. (I.e. Possibly slightly more dense than the original cake, but still edible.) Don't think I would bother with sponge cake - too much risk of losing the lightness inherent to a sponge cake. You could also skip the vacuum and just use the sealer to make sure the cake is well packaged, if your sealer gives that option. I might do that, if I had a sealer handy. Anything to reduce the risk of the cake and frosting picking up flavors.

[Franci]

Thanks for all your answers. I experimented with this cake and it worked pretty well, maybe it suffered a bit but not too much.

I also made a butter mochi and it seems pretty dense to withstand the treatment.

[Bojana]

I have frozen madeleines in ziploc, then chamber sealed frozen them without crushing. Two step freezing for longer keeping time

[KennethT]

I also would be curious about pre-freezing the cake, and then vacuum sealing. Sometimes, I buy really fresh fish from a fishing boat on the Florida Gulf coast. They process the fish, quick-freeze then vacuum pack, and ship on dry ice. They recommend to cut the vacuum bag before defrosting, citing that the pressure differential could damage the non-frozen flesh. I don't know how valid it is, but I've always done it that way and have had no problems.

[greenbean]

I freeze cakes all the time and do a " bootleg" vacuum seal. I wrap them in plastic wrap, place them in a 2 gallon Ziplock bag, suck the air out with a straw, and quickly zip it closed. This ensures a nice seal without crushing the cake.

[AKS613]

I just did this with mini pound cakes. I froze them solid first and then sealed them with the vacuum sealer. The trick is to almost "pulse" it like a food processor. Do it manually in short bursts while the cake is frozen solid and stop just before it sucks too much air out of it. HTH. Good luck!

[Jogy]

or you could use a vacuum container, no damage to cake