Monday, September 29, 2014

How To Store The Top Tier Of Your Wedding Cake (so it tastes great a year later)

The end of our wedding reception is more of a blur than the wedding itself. Nearly all our guests traveled, so they almost all took the shuttle we rented back to the hotel after the ceremony ended. Pete and I were left, carless, at the venue. We had a room in the resort for the night and I knew we could get a ride back home in the morning, but I never thought about all the items that we would actually have after the wedding. We had leftover favors, miscellaneous centerpiece items, two guitars, and gifts that had to go somewhere ... somewhere that wasn't our honeymoon suite.

Two of our friends, who live in our town, were amazing and took all of our stuff back to their house.

Including the top tier or our wedding cake.

I really thought storing the top tier was simple. I thought you put it in the freezer and took it out a year later and had it on your first anniversary. Simple. 

Oh no. There's a process to it.

How To Store The Top Tier Of Your Wedding Cake

Our friends did ours for us (small aside: If you read our post Five Things No One Tells You About Your Wedding Day, number four was that you need that one random friend who will help you at the end of the night, after your parents and bridal party have retired from their duties. These friends were those friends) so I don't have any personal experience doing this. But I do have instructions from the bakery we used: Imaginary Cakes. Their instructions are paraphrased below:

How To Store The Top Tier Of Your Wedding Cake

  • Remove the cake topper and any big decorations from the top tier of the cake. Any edible decorations can be left.
  • Freeze the cake in the freezer for an hour. This hardens the icing so it doesn't stick to anything later in the process.
  • Remove from the freezer and wrap in plastic wrap. Cover the cake in its entirety, making sure its covered from the top to bottom and all sides. This wrap should be airtight.
  • Double wrap the cake with aluminum foil. This makes sure there's no taste of freezer burn.
  • Put the wrapped cake in a box.
  • Place the box (with the cake inside) in a freezer-safe tight container, plastic bag, or a garbage bag.
  • Leave the cake in the freezer for a year.

The Day Before Your Anniversary

  • Take the bag from the freezer and place in the fridge overnight.

The Day Of Your Anniversary

  • Remove the cake from the fridge and let it thaw for 30 minutes before serving.
The cake above, that's my friend Susan's baseball cake from her wedding last weekend. It was delicious, in case you were wondering. If you want to check out a photo of my cake, there's one in this post.

BRIDAL BABBLE: Do you plan on saving the top tier of your wedding cake?

15 comments:

  1. We saved ours.... and a few years later it's still in there. We never even took it out on our first anniversary. It might be time to just trash it

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  2. Hmmm interesting I'm not sure how my mom wrapped ours but a year later it didn't taste as good as our wedding day that's for sure. Thanks for the tip will deff pin this so others know what to do (:

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  3. When we married 34 years ago I gave my Mom the top of our cake for saving while we went on our honeymoon. Well, she had a lot of company that weekend and ran out of sweets and guess what? She served my wedding cake to her guests.

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  4. Very interesting and never dreamed a cake would last so long.

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  5. We did this! Worked great!

    commonsenseandstilettos@yahoo.com
    Jasmine P

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  6. Holy cow, you forgot the last step: bury it in a time capsule. I did not wrap mine that well, so now I don't feel bad that I left it in the freezer of the hotel when we were moving, and housekeeping threw it out. It probably would have been inedible!

    Aria H.

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  7. This is good info to know. I wrapped my daughters top of the cake which I thought was well done, ha it didn't taste so great a year later.

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  8. Very good info on saving your cake. I don't even remember if I saved mine (40 years ago)
    slehan at juno dot com

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  9. I always wondered how to save the cake for a year and it still be good..I apparently did not do it right..our cake was inedible...lol..Debbie Hinson

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  10. We are about to renew our vows with a big wedding (20th anniversary) , this is really a great idea and I will try it. Thanks!

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  11. thanks for saeing this we were wondering how this will even last a year without getting freezer burnt great solution thanks

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  12. You have a terrific & informative blog!

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  13. What a great tip. I just thought you put it in a container and then in the freezer.

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  14. Great tip for those wanting to save their top tier of their wedding cake. It's been customary now for cake designers to offer a fresh top tier to couple's a year later (which is included in their pricing).

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  15. Our top tier was accidentally placed in one of our plastic bins that went home with our wedding planner with all our misc items until we could pick it up after our HM (which was 2 weeks long). Once we went looking for the top tier and finally found where it was - it was already a month of being in the plastic bin. We spoke with our venue & they took responsibility for it & bought us a new top tier at our 6 month mark which we ate right then & there. Bought a new one at our 1 year mark & do the same for every anniversary now. I wish I had known all this information 5 years ago!

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