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Is It OK To Freeze A Birthday Cake?

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By MARY A. KEITH

Tribune correspondent

Published: February 8, 2009

Is it OK to freeze a birthday cake? We have more left than we can eat right now.

Most cakes will freeze fine; it's the frosting that's usually the problem. An uncooked butter cream frosting usually freezes best. Whipped cream frosting sometimes weeps or gets tough, cooked frostings often crumble or crack when frozen. If you decide to go ahead and freeze it, freeze the cake unwrapped until it's solid, then wrap and store. Use frosted cakes within three months for best quality.

If a recipe calls for coconut milk, do I use it straight out of the can, or should I dilute it like canned milk?

Coconut milk is used as is; it does not need to be diluted. It is not concentrated the way evaporated milk is. But be careful about coconut milk versus cream of coconut. Cream of coconut is sweetened and is made with more coconut, so it is thicker and has more oil than coconut milk. It is not a substitute for coconut milk, and recipes won't turn out as well if it is used for baking unless the recipe specifically calls for it. Cream of coconut is usually meant for mixed drinks.

When I opened a can of sauerkraut, it spit and fizzed at me, so I threw it away. Do you think it was safe, with all that salt it has?

It might have been safe, but it might have been unsafe, so you did the right thing. Rather than the salt, what preserves sauerkraut is mostly the acid formed when the cabbage is fermented. That acid might have gotten to the metal of the can and produced gas that made the can fizz. But if the acid ate a hole in the can, bacteria could get in. And it might have tasted very metallic anyway. So, rest assured, you did the right thing.

Does it take as long to roast a turkey breast as it does a whole turkey?

The time depends on the weight of the meat, so a large breast could take about as long as a very small whole turkey. Since just a breast is not usually stuffed, it might take a little less time than a stuffed small turkey. The safe way to tell when it's done is to use a meat thermometer; 165 degrees is done. You can't tell by the color of the juice, or by wiggling a leg on a whole bird.

I don't like fish at all, even though I know it's good for the omega-3 oil. How much flaxseed do I need to eat to make up for the fish I won't eat?

The kind of omega-3 oil in flaxseed is not the same as the kind in fish. Although the flaxseed oil does have benefits, it does not give us the heart protection fish oils do. And our bodies are not good at converting the flax kind - only about 3 percent to 8 percent gets changed according to most studies. If you can't stand fish, you're probably better off taking fish oil capsules. They are not as good as eating fish, since they don't have the other vitamins, minerals and proteins. But they're better than vegetable sources of omega-3 oils. There is no official recommended intake, but most medical organizations recommend about 500 milligrams of the fish omega-3 a day.

What do they put on baby carrots? The skin gets so white, it looks as if they've been bleached.

Baby carrots have been peeled so they're ready to eat. Many have been trimmed to give them a more uniform shape too. Without the protective skin that whole large carrots have, baby carrots dry out, and that's why they turn white. Whole carrots still have the skin that keeps their moisture inside and their color orange. Although baby carrots, like most ready-to-eat vegetables, have been rinsed with a chlorine bleach to kill any bacteria that might be there, the bleach is so diluted it won't turn the carrots white, or hurt us.

Mary A. Keith, a nutritionist and health agent at Hillsborough County Extension, can be reached at (813) 744-5519 or mkeith@ufl.edu.

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