Can you freeze cake? Freezing every cake type

A spare slice after a birthday, half a loaf cake nobody quite finished, or a wedding tier you'd love to keep for the anniversary. The question is the same every time, and it's one we're asked in the Soho kitchen more than almost any other. Can you freeze cake, and which kinds survive the trip in and out of a home freezer with their crumb intact? The short answer is yes, for almost everything, with a couple of exceptions and a few small techniques that decide whether the defrosted cake tastes like the day it was baked or like a damp tea towel. Here's what we've learned.

The short answer

Most cakes freeze beautifully. Wrapped properly, a plain or filled sponge keeps for around three months in a home freezer, a fruit cake far longer, and a cheesecake about a month at its best. The list of cakes that don't freeze well is short: fondant-covered, royal-iced, and anything filled with fresh cream alone. Everything else is fair game with the right wrapping and a slow, gentle defrost.

How long can you freeze cake?

UK home freezers run at around -18°C, and the Food Standards Agency advises keeping a freezer at about that temperature. Food that was fresh and in good condition when it went in will keep safely at -18°C, so what changes over the months is quality rather than safety. Freezing won't rescue a cake that was already past its best. The FSA suggests three to four months for baked goods, and we'd treat three months as the practical limit at home. After that, even a well-wrapped cake starts to taste faintly of the freezer.

A rough guide by cake type:

• Plain sponge, Victoria sponge, chocolate cake, carrot cake, lemon drizzle: up to 3 months.
• Fruit cake and Christmas cake (uniced): up to around 12 months. The alcohol, sugar and dried fruit protect the texture far longer than a sponge.
• Cheesecake: up to 1 month at its best.
• Cakes with American buttercream: up to 3 months.
• Cakes with Italian or Swiss meringue buttercream: up to 3 months, though they usually need a re-whip after defrosting.
• Cakes with a fresh cream filling: not recommended. The cream tends to go grainy and split as it defrosts.
• Anything finished in fondant or royal icing: don't freeze it.

Label everything with the cake and the date it went in. Memory is unreliable in the back of a chest freezer.

Quick answers by cake type

If you're standing in front of an open freezer door, start here.

Cake	Freeze it?	How long	Watch out for
Victoria sponge	Yes	3 months	Freeze the layers unfilled where you can
Chocolate cake	Yes	3 months	Very little, it's a forgiving bake
Carrot cake	Yes	3 months, 1 month frosted	Cream cheese frosting softens on defrost
Lemon drizzle	Yes, drizzle first	3 months	Let the syrup set before wrapping
Banana or apple cake	Yes	3 months	Slice first, they defrost quickly
Coffee and walnut	Yes	3 months	Freeze before icing if you can
Fruit cake, uniced	Yes	Up to 12 months	Marzipan is fine, royal icing isn't
Christmas cake, finished	No	-	Icing weeps as it thaws
Baked cheesecake	Yes	1 month	Fridge defrost only
No-bake cheesecake	Yes, with care	1 month	The set loosens, so serve cold
Swiss roll	Yes	3 months	Freeze whole, slice defrosted
Cupcakes and fairy cakes	Yes	3 months	Open-freeze iced ones before boxing
Stollen	Yes	3 months	Re-dust with icing sugar afterwards
Brownies	Yes	3 months	Very little, they freeze well
Fondant-covered cake	No	-	Freeze the sponge, re-cover after
Fresh cream filled	No	-	The cream splits

How to wrap a cake for the freezer

The single biggest factor in how a frozen cake tastes is how well it's wrapped. Air is the enemy. It dries the surface, lifts the crumb, and lets freezer smells soak into what is, after all, a very porous thing.

1. Cool the cake completely. Warm cake creates condensation inside the wrap, condensation creates ice crystals, and ice crystals turn the crumb gritty on the way back out.
2. Wrap in a double layer of cling film. Press the film against the surface to push the air out, then wrap a second layer in the opposite direction.
3. Add a final layer of foil. This blocks light and odours and gives a far more reliable seal than cling film on its own.
4. Wrap layers separately. Two sponge layers wrapped together will fuse as they defrost. Wrap each one individually, even if they go into the freezer as a pair.
5. Portion before freezing. Pre-cut your slices, separate them with greaseproof, then double-wrap the parcel, so you can pull out one slice on a Tuesday night without defrosting the whole cake.

For larger or decorated cakes, open-freeze first. Sit the unwrapped cake on a tray for a couple of hours until the frosting is firm, then wrap it. The wrap protects the cake, and the open freeze protects the wrap.

How different cakes freeze

Cake type matters more than most people expect. The same wrapping method gives noticeably different results depending on fat content, moisture and what's sitting on top.

Can you freeze sponge cake and Victoria sponge?

Yes, and they're among the best candidates when they go in uniced. Bake, cool, wrap, freeze. They defrost in three to four hours at room temperature and taste very close to fresh, if always a shade less springy than a same-day bake. If you've baked from our vanilla sponge cake recipe and want to fill and decorate later, freeze the layers separately and assemble once they've defrosted. The classic proportions, and there's more on those in our history of the Victoria sponge cake, give you a butter-rich crumb that stands up to the freezer well.

Can you freeze chocolate cake?

Chocolate cake is the most forgiving thing in the freezer. The high fat content means it defrosts far closer to its original texture than a lean sponge does, and the depth of flavour covers any small changes along the way. Our best-ever chocolate fudge cake recipe is exactly the sort of bake that's happier spending a few days in the freezer than a few days on the counter.

Can you freeze carrot cake?

Very well indeed, thanks to all that oil in the batter. Freeze it without the cream cheese frosting where you can and frost after defrosting, but a fully frosted carrot cake is perfectly good for a month if the frosting is a stable American-style cream cheese mix. Defrost it in the fridge rather than on the counter.

Can you freeze lemon drizzle cake?

Yes, and arguably it's better drizzled than not. The syrup keeps the crumb moist right through the freeze and defrost. Cool the cake, drizzle it, let the syrup set, then wrap and freeze.

Can you freeze fruit cake and Christmas cake?

Fruit cake is the freezer's natural ally. A plain fruit cake, or one wrapped in marzipan alone, will keep for up to a year. That said, freezing isn't the traditional route. A fruit cake is usually matured at cool room temperature, wrapped in greaseproof and foil and fed every few weeks, which is what builds the flavour in the first place. Use the freezer for a surplus cake, or when you're short of a cool cupboard, rather than as the default.

What you shouldn't freeze is a finished royal-iced or fondant Christmas cake. If you'd rather not think about any of it, our Christmas cakes arrive ready to go on the table.

Can you freeze cheesecake?

Cheesecakes freeze better than most people expect. Open-freeze on a tray until firm, then wrap. Because a cheesecake is a dairy-heavy chilled product, defrost it in the fridge overnight and never at room temperature, and eat it within a month for the best texture. Beyond that the set tends to get looser as it thaws.

Baked cheesecakes hold up better than no-bake ones, but both can be frozen with care. A no-bake cheesecake relies on cream and gelatine or chocolate for its structure rather than eggs, so it comes back a little softer than it went in. Freeze it whole rather than sliced, defrost it in the fridge, and serve it properly cold rather than letting it come up to room temperature.

Can you freeze cake with buttercream or icing?

Yes, with one extra step. American buttercream, which is icing sugar, butter and a splash of milk, freezes very happily for three months. Italian and Swiss meringue buttercreams, whipped with egg whites and hot syrup, are just as freezer-stable and keep for the same three months, but they come back looking slightly deflated. A few minutes back in the mixer, or a firm stir once they've reached room temperature, brings them straight back.

Either way, open-freeze the iced cake first to firm up the buttercream, then wrap it. Once defrosted, smooth any softened patches with a warm palette knife and nobody will ever know.

Can you freeze a fondant-covered cake?

Don't. Fondant draws in moisture from the freezer and from the condensation that forms as it defrosts. It turns sticky, then it weeps, then it runs. The cake underneath will be fine, but the finish is beyond saving. If you have to freeze a fondant cake, freeze the sponge layers and re-cover it once it's defrosted.

Can you freeze vegan cake?

Vegan sponges freeze well and defrost cleanly. Frostings are where it varies. Vegan buttercream made with a block spread behaves much like the dairy sort, while aquafaba-based frostings can lose volume and are usually better made fresh on the day. Our vegan cakes range gives you a sense of which styles hold together.

Can you freeze wheat-free cake?

You can, and the trick is to do it early. Cakes made without wheat tend to lose their structure faster than wheat-based ones, so ideally get them into the freezer within a day of baking, before they've had a chance to dry out. Defrost them slowly in the fridge, still in their wrapping. If you'd rather leave it to us, we have a wheat-free cakes range that arrives ready to eat.

Can you freeze cake batter?

You can, but results vary and we'd usually steer you away from it. A batter raised with baking powder or bicarbonate of soda starts reacting the moment it's mixed, so a frozen batter tends to rise less than a fresh one and can bake a little dense. Whisked batters suffer most, because they lose the air you worked so hard to beat in. If you want to get ahead, freeze the baked sponge rather than the raw batter. It's the more reliable answer by some distance.

Can you freeze wedding cake?

This is the one people worry about most, and happily it's usually very doable. The tradition of keeping the top tier for a first anniversary, or a christening, comes from an age when wedding cakes were always fruit cake. A well-wrapped fruit tier will sit in the freezer for a year quite happily.

A sponge tier is a different proposition. Sponge is at its best within three months, so keeping one for a whole year is optimistic. If your top tier is sponge and you want a keepsake, freeze it for the honeymoon and eat it when you get home, or ask your baker about a small anniversary cake instead.

Whichever you have, take the decoration off first. Sugar flowers, fondant and royal icing all suffer, so strip the tier back, wrap it in a double layer of cling film and a layer of foil, box it, and label it clearly so it survives a house move. Get it into the freezer promptly rather than at the end of a long day out of the fridge, and if the tier contains fresh cream or a fresh fruit filling, treat it as a chilled product and eat it rather than freezing it. Defrost slowly in the fridge, then bring it up to room temperature before serving. It's always worth asking your baker what your particular tier will take, and if you're ordering from our wedding cakes range, just ask us.

How to defrost cake properly

The right defrost is an unhurried one. Leave the wrapping on until the cake is fully up to room temperature, because taking it off early invites condensation onto the surface, and condensation on cake looks like sweating and tastes soggy.

• Whole cakes: move from freezer to fridge 8 to 12 hours before serving, then to room temperature an hour before slicing. Large or tiered cakes need longer, so give a big one a full 24 hours in the fridge.
• Single slices: 1 to 2 hours at room temperature, still wrapped.
• Anything with fresh cream, cream cheese or custard, cheesecake included: thaw in the fridge overnight, never at room temperature.
• Fully iced cakes: fridge overnight, then finish at room temperature in the wrapping, and unwrap for the last half hour to let the surface set.
• Microwaving: generally a poor idea. Even a low-power thaw setting can leave hot spots that turn the crumb gummy. The exception is warming a single, already defrosted slice for a few seconds, which works nicely for chocolate cake and sponge, and never for cheesecake or anything iced.

One small bonus: a part-frozen cake slices far more cleanly than a fully defrosted one. If you want tidy portions, cut them while the cake is still firm, with a knife warmed in hot water and wiped dry between slices. There's more on that in our ultimate cake serving and slicing guide.

How long does cake last once it's defrosted?

Treat a defrosted cake exactly as you would a fresh one, and follow whatever storage guidance came with it. As a rule, eat it within a day or two. A cake that's been through the freezer stales a little faster than one straight from the oven, so it isn't the moment to leave it under a dome for the week. Anything with cream, cream cheese or custard in it goes back in the fridge between servings.

Can you refreeze cake?

As a rule, no. Every freeze and thaw cycle damages the crumb and pushes water out of the structure, so a refrozen cake comes back drier and denser than it went in. The exception, and the FSA agrees on this one, is a cake that's been defrosted and then cooked into something else. Defrosted sponge turned into a baked trifle or a hot pudding counts as a new dish and can be frozen as such, though you should only reheat it once after that. As a kitchen rule, defrost what you'll actually eat.

Quick freezing checklist

• Cool the cake completely before wrapping.
• Double cling film, then a layer of foil.
• Wrap layers individually.
• Open-freeze iced cakes before wrapping.
• Label with the cake and the date it went in.
• Defrost in the wrapping, in the fridge for anything with cream, cream cheese or custard.
• Three months for most cakes, twelve for fruit cake, one for cheesecake.
• Don't refreeze.

Frequently asked questions

Can you freeze a birthday cake?

Yes, as long as it isn't finished in fondant or fresh cream. Slice what's left the same evening, interleave the slices with greaseproof, double-wrap them and freeze. They'll be good for three months.

Can you freeze shop-bought cake?

Usually, yes. The storage instructions on the packaging always take precedence, so check those first and follow them if they say not to freeze. Otherwise, freeze it well before the best-before date rather than on it, and take it out of any cardboard sleeve so you can wrap it properly.

Does freezing cake dry it out?

Not the freezing, no. Drying is caused by air getting to the surface, which is a wrapping problem rather than a temperature one, and by a slow or repeated defrost.

Should you freeze cake before or after icing?

Before, if you have the choice, because bare sponge freezes and defrosts most cleanly. If the cake is already iced, open-freeze it first so the frosting firms up before it meets the cling film.

Can you freeze cake in its box?

Not on its own. A cardboard box lets air straight through. Wrap the cake in cling film and foil first, then use the box for protection if it helps.

The bottom line

Cake is one of the easier things in the kitchen to freeze. With clean wrapping and a slow defrost, a sponge from three months ago comes back tasting remarkably close to the day it was baked. The traps are few, a rushed defrost, fondant on top, fresh cream inside, and easy to sidestep once you know them. Treat the freezer as part of the cake-keeping kit, and the slice you save tonight becomes a very good reason to put the kettle on next month.