cake baking tips | Cake Ideas 101

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.

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Cake Ideas many times revolve around how many people a cake will serve. Of course the biggest determiner to that question is how big the pieces are cut 🙂 . Generally, a cake mix box is going to say that a mix will make 12 servings. Those are pretty hefty portions if you are looking at it in a 9 x 13 pan. That means you would slice the cake in six rows the width of the cake and then cut it down the middle, making 12 pieces. We usually slice it in the six rows but cut it twice the other way for 3 rows to make 18 pieces, and these are still plenty big. It can just as easily be cut in 4 rows to produce 24 pieces. If you are serving other things like ice cream or nuts and mints, this is a nice-sized piece. Cake is usually served as a refreshment and not as a meal anyway 🙂 . Cakes done in the sheet pan (or cookie pan) that is about 11 x 17 can easily be cut to serve 28 people, and that is with just one cake mix. This is 4 rows of 7 pieces, as illustrated in the first picture below. The second picture shows individual pieces marked for a 12 x 18 cake that will serve 50 people. It uses 2 cake mixes.

Round, heart, and other miscellaneous shaped cakes are a little harder to figure for how many they will serve. It's best to keep in mind how thick the pieces will be. As in the two above pictures, the one is in the cake pan and is only about 1/2" to 3/4" thick. The second one is from a 2" deep pan. So even though the pieces in the second one are smaller in surface area, they are also at least twice at thick as the one in the pan. If the decorated cake is a layer cake, you have even more height so the pieces can be cut narrower for the same amount of serving size. As you can see, decorating cakes for that special occasion can be a little tricky in the planning when it comes to figuring how many it will serve. The shape of the pan and the height of the cake can account for several variables. But just as a basic guide, a good rule of thumb is to figure one mix will make anywhere from 18 to 24 pieces to serve the guests. Of course, the biggest thing to figure in would be the person cutting the cake. If they like hefty pieces on the plate, you may just come up short in the end. Guest will then either be receiving a 'sliver' of cake in order to make it stretch, or they will get not at all 🙁 . If unsure there will be enough to go around, take a stash of homemade chocolate chip cookies to serve to the end of the line if you do run out, and I'm sure they will be just as happy 🙂 .