fruit cake-how to store/keep

I always thought you can keep the fruit but not with the marzipan - i.e. take off the icing and marzipan and freeze just the cake. Means you will have to have it reiced for a christening cake however.

BUT.... hitched seemed to have some advice on it too... https://www.hitched.co.uk/cakes/article9.asp

Thanks girls

Hi there,

This is what I give to my brides as instructions on how to store their fruit cakes. However, this is based on my own fruit cakes which contain lots of alcohol to preserve them and are also well sealed to a covered cake board and covered with good thick layers of marzipan and sugarpaste. M&S cakes are probably have a good slug of alcohol in them too but I'm not sure how well sealed they are. (As I have no experience of them - that's not necessarily a critisism).

If you intend to keep one of the tiers of your wedding cake for a future occasion such as a christening or anniversary, this is easily done. There are various ways that a fruit cake can be preserved including stripping off the icing and marzipan immediately or freezing the cake.

I recommend the following method and have stripped and re-iced many of my own cakes that have been stored in this way up to 8 years after they were first made for a wedding.

v If the cake has been dowelled for stacking or pillars or contains ‘hidden pillars’ through the cake, do not remove the dowels or hidden pillars from the cake. Similarly do not remove any posy picks that have been put into the cake to hold the stems of flower sprays. It is very important that the fruit cake is not exposed to the air at all. Dowels and hidden pillars can be cut down to the same height as the cake to make wrapping easier.

v Keeping the cake on the board wrap the whole cake (with the board, icing and marzipan, dowels, hidden pillars and posy picks still in tact) in several layers of greaseproof paper.

v Wrap the whole wrapped cake in tin foil.

Store the wrapped cake either in the cardboard cake box provided or in a tin. Never store it in Tupperware or any air-tight plastic container as this may cause the sugarpaste to sweat and go sticky,