How Fridge Storage Could Ruin Your Cake
Moist, delicious cake is a thing to behold. Whether your secret is adding some mayonnaise to your favorite recipe or some sour cream to your cake mix, achieving that soft silky texture that makes you want to sink your teeth into every forkful of cake is like achieving baking nirvana. A lot of tender love, care, and effort go into the process. But if you are storing your cake in the refrigerator, you may be ruining that very characteristic of your favorite coffee cake recipe your mom gave to you or that red velvet or chocolate devil's food cake recipe that has been passed down from generation to generation.
The refrigerator is a modern convenience that we take for granted. It allows us to keep food fresher for longer. As Science ABC and Healthyway.com note, before the age of refrigerators, people buried their food in the snow and in the ground to preserve its freshness. And instead of roommates, kids, and hangry spouses, you had to worry about animals and other people coming along and usurping it. But the refrigerator is not always your friend when it comes to cake, and it is actually not the best place to store it.
The fridge can dry out your cake
All Recipes notes the refrigerator causes your frosting to harden which is a travesty in and of itself, but as Delishably explains, storing cake in a refrigerator is going to remove all that beautiful moisture you worked so hard to achieve. This will make your cake dry, less appealing to the taste buds, and leave you reaching for a glass of milk or water to compensate. Unfortunately, the drying out process can happen in a relatively short amount of time. For this reason, both sites recommend storing your cake at room temperature in an airtight container — that is, if there is any left to store.
However, as with all things, there is always an exception. Delishably notes that if your cake is starting to melt like the character Olaf from Disney's "Frozen" on a sunny day, you probably want to pop the cake in the fridge to preserve the buttercream icing. All Recipes also states that if your cake has a "fresh fruit topping or filling, whipped cream, or cream cheese frosting," it also needs to go in the fridge.