I’m a believer in “if you can eat it, you can freeze it”. So, while I love small batch baking for enjoying the freshest baked goods in small quantities, knowing I can freeze anything means I also always have some sort of treat stowed away in the freezer.
Like this chocolate cake. Yes, fully baked and frosted chocolate cake slices are sitting in my freezer ready to eat, needing just about 30 minutes thawing time at room temperature—or overnight in the fridge, if you’re more about planning dessert than giving into spontaneous cravings.
The key to freezing any baked good is to let it flash freeze on a baking sheet before wrapping and putting it away for longer term storage. Flash freezing is simply freezing the item until it’s frozen solid. Ideally, this is best done with a fresh baked item since you’re preserving it at its peak taste. Once the cake or pastry has been sitting on the counter for a few days, it might not be worth the effort and freezer space in terms of flavor.
For fully finished cakes, like you see above, just slice them into single serving portions and set the pieces on a waxed paper or silicon mat lined baking sheet. Place the tray in the freezer until the cake slices are frozen solid, then transfer the perfectly preserved cake slices to a container with no worry of the frosting getting messy or the pieces sticking together. You can wrap the slices in layers of plastic film for extra protection against freezer burn if you like.
This same method applies to scones, muffins, cookies, even pies (whole or slices). If freezing whole cakes or pies, I recommend thawing them overnight in the fridge since it’ll take longer to defrost than a single slice. For whole baked pies, once thawed overnight in the fridge, give them a refresh in a 350ºF for 10 to 15 minutes if you want to revive that fresh-baked experience.
I also wanted to give an update on what’s happening around here. If you click on the main page, you’ll see lots of “new” old recipes. Those of you who were long time readers of my original site will likely recognize a few if not all. Those 20 recipes are merely a drop in the bucket of 12 years worth of recipes saved there, and it is going to be a process involving many weekends and nights after work to migrate the recipes over here, so I started with some of the most popular recipes of all-time, which also happen to be some of my personal favorites (if I eat the apple galettes with my eyes closed, I can almost pretend I’m back in Paris).
I’m excited to unearth some of my older recipes and posts, especially the early days since those are time capsules of when Michael was alive. Rereading those feels like I’m peering into someone else’s life—the longer he’s gone, the harder it is to believe those words were actually my lived experiences.
What I’m most excited about, though, in sharing my previously published writing and recipes is to enjoy them in a format free of ads and writing to appease the SEO and Google gods. I hope you enjoy experiencing them this way, too, and thank you for your support if you’re a paid subscriber. For the time being, I’ve decided to make posts available for everyone to read, but only paid subscribers can access the recipes at the end of each one. I can’t promise this won’t change in the future. For now, this feels fair and equitable over putting everything behind a paywall, a term I know we’re all starting to dread (RIP wordle).
A sneak peek of what’s coming soon: Chocolate Crumb Donut Cake, Chickpea Meatballs, Orange Ricotta Pancakes, Sfilatini (homemade Italian bread), White Chocolate Frosting, Milk Chocolate Frosting, and my Challah Bread recipe!
Yes! I’m a big freezer of already baked goods too! I’ve found that my family as a whole prefers the set texture of baked goods cooled and set, so saving cookie dough in the freezer to bake off fresh is less appealing than having a container of frozen already-baked cookies to take out individually and defrost and enjoy almost immediately. I slice and individually portion quick breads and simple cakes as well, and of course sliced (homemade) bread! This has always made the most sense for me with a small family that eats things slowly and also because I do most of my baking in spurts on weekends. I’ll have to try it with frosted cakes sometime! The flash freeze step makes so much sense for that! Thanks for your helpful tips, and I am loving seeing your old stories and writing again in my RSS reader as you post them on substack!