Cake Ideas – Preparing for the Graduation Cake Rush

Cake ideas start coming around in May for 8th grade promotions and high school and college graduations. This is one time of year when everyone seems to want their cakes on the same day or couple of days. This definitely takes some planning and preparation. The last few years, I have had orders for 25 or more cakes to be done in about 3 days. The first time I had that many orders, I baked and decorated a certain number of cakes per day – till exhaustion, with only 4 or 5 hours of sleep between. The next year, I did it with a whole new routine. The week before all the cakes were needing to be decorated, all the cakes were baked and stuck in the freezer, and many batches of decorators icing were mixed up and put in the refrigerator. Then the week prior to the graduations, the number of cakes to be decorated each day (usually 6 or 7) were taken out of the freezer the night before. That way it was just a matter of decorating cakes for the day and no baking was involved. That made things go so much smoother! It's much easier to concentrate on one thing at a time, like either baking OR decorating – not both 😉 So how do you prepare the cake for freezing? In one of my earlier posts, I explained how I line my cake pans with waxed paper before baking. Once baked and cooled, I dump the cake out on the waxed cardboard and leave that waxed paper on them to seal them for freezing. I also have 1/4" boards I put under those cardboards to help support the cake to keep it from splitting. I then insert the whole thing – cake, cardboard, and 1/4" board into a white unscented 13 gallon tall kitchen trash bag and seal it up. This helps protect the cake in the freezer. Pull the cake out of the freezer the night before and let it thaw in the bag overnight. This is also the time to set the frosting out of the refrigerator so it will be softer for spreading the next day. The next morning, take the cake out of the bag and remove the waxed paper from the cake. This whole process has kept the moisture sealed in the cake. Doing cakes for graduation if you have several orders can be a little stressful, but if you can establish a routine that works for you, it will go much smoother. If you have any other cake decorating ideas for the graduation rush, please feel free to post them here as a comment to share with others.