In praise of frozen layers.

It should be obvious from the photo series below what a boon frozen layers are to the cake builder. For indeed freezing is the only practical way to stack and shape tender buttercake layers which are so prone to breaking, tearing and crumbling at room temperature. Frozen layers, by comparison, can be turned on their edge, trimmed, cut, stacked, pushed, patted, prodded and poked with nary a consequence. Yes, you could go out find yourself a tougher “professional” grade recipe of the kind I spoke of below, the type that can be carved like a hunk of styrofoam at room temperature, but…why? Homemade cakes should be love on a fork, at least in my opinion, all melt-in-the-mouth butter and egg. Let the architects have the floury, sugary heavy-lifting stuff.

Granted, you occasionally find a cake bakery whose signs or boxes call out “Our cakes are never frozen!” but that’s really a false benefit. Provided a cake isn’t delivered to a wedding still icy on the inside (though that’s been known to happen), a short period of freezing does no harm whatsoever to a cake layer. A night or two is nothing, though indeed I keep them (well wrapped) for anything up to two months in the bottom of a chest freezer. Thought truth be told they rarely last that long.