What Happens if you use Expired Funfetti Frosting?

When you find a good price on cake mixes and frostings, it is hard to pass them up. Back in the day of couponing, cake mixes and icing regularly went on sale and you could get them for very cheap.

Unfortunately, when you buy a lot of these baking items, it is easy to end up with expired cake mixes and frosting in your cabinets!

I love to test out expired products, so let’s see what happens when I used an expired cake mix and Funfetti frosting!

Does Funfetti frosting expire?

Most premade icing has a “best by” or “use by” date on the packaging, but these aren’t really expiration dates. Expiration means that it is unsafe to eat, and the federal government does not regulate how expiration dates are to be marked on premade icing.

Now this doesn’t mean that Funfetti frosting lasts forever, but it means that we have to do our own due diligence before using expired frosting.

How long is frosting good for after expiration date?

I used to have a not great habit of picking up lots and lots of cake mixes and frosting as just in case of need. Cakes are the easiest thing to take to a potluck or party, so I always had some on hand.

Over the last 2 years, we haven’t really been going to any parties, so I have quite a few cake mixes and frosting containers that have reached their “best by” date.

This week, my oldest son turned 6 years old, and he requested a cake from Mom! So I looked in my cabinet and pulled out the oldest cake mix and icing. We ended up with a white cake mix and a yellow Funfetti icing tub.

The cake mix expired Sept 2021 (about 16 months ago) and the Funfetti frosting expired July 2022 (about 8 months ago).

Can you use frosting past the best by date?

I decided to go ahead and make the expired cake mix and frosting, knowing that if they turned out awful that I had plenty more that wasn’t expired. (I’m not going to deny my son a birthday cake!)

I live by my 5 senses and common sense when it comes to expired food, so I am going to walk you through how I checked these foods to see if they were still safe to eat.

Visual-My first step was to inspect the box of cake mix to see if was damaged or had any signs of water or moisture. If a box gets wet, it usually causes discoloration or soft spots on the box. This cake mix looked fine from the outside.

Sound– Next I opened the box and pulled out the cake mix bag. I then shook the bag to see if the bag was damaged or had holes in it. I also shook the box to see if I could hear any mix that escaped the bag. The cake mix bag had not been damaged and was not missing any contents.

Touch– I opened the cake mix and dumped it in a bowl. I was looking for odd clumps that were moist or anything that looked out of place. There was no clumps and no discoloration in the cake mix.

Smell- At this point, I also smelled the dry cake mix and it smelled pleasantly sweet. If it smelled like oil or had an off smell, I would have tossed it at this point. Everything seemed fine, so I went ahead and made the cake per the box instructions.

(I will note, that this cake mix required 4 egg whites and with the cost of eggs recently, I decided to conserve my eggs and just use 2 whole eggs. This cake mix requests egg whites in order to achieve a perfect white color when baked.)

Results: The cake puffed up as expected and baked just fine! My oven has a tricky hot spot so my cake did end up a little higher on one side then the other, but that had nothing to do with the age of the cake mix.

Once the cake was cooled, I then moved on to the icing. We will go through the 5 senses again to check out the icing.

Visual– I check the outside of the icing container to see if we had any dents, a broken seal, or any clues the frosting had been exposed to moisture. The container looked perfect!

Sound– Since this was not a product that was sealed with air, there was no sounds to look out for on the icing container.

Touch– Once I opened the sealed top of the frosting, I looked for any odd textures like the icing being grainy or any discolorations. This looked fine and the texture seemed totally normal. I moved the icing to a bowl, so I could see everything better and also to mix it up with a spoon so it would be easier to spread.

Smell– At this point, I did smell the icing and it had a normal sweet smell with no indications of anything being off.

Taste– Before actually putting the frosting on the cake, I did sample a small amount. I didn’t want to ruin a whole cake if the icing tasted bad. Thankfully it tasted just like premade vanilla icing, so I went ahead and frosted the top of the cake.

At this point, I am thinking all is well with my expired cake mix and frosting mix! Woohoo!

Then I opened the little top container of sprinkles from the Funfetti frosting. I immediately noticed an off smell that reminded me of burnt oil. They looked completely fine and had no moisture clumping or any visual clue.

This was not good! It appears that even though the icing was fine, the sprinkles had indeed gone rancid. If you have every smelled sprinkles, you will know they have very little smell at all and usually have a slight sweet aroma.

These Funfetti sprinkles were definitely not safe to eat, so they went in the trash. Thankfully, I had some spare sprinkles in the cupboard and was able to use those instead of the original Funfetti sprinkles. My son had no idea that I made the substitution and loved his birthday cake!

Is it ok to use expired cake mix and frosting?

Based on our experiment of using out of date cake mix and frosting, I would say it is perfectly fine to use it if you thoroughly inspect it first.

The cake mix was out of date by 16 months, and it baked just fine and tasted great. It appears that cake mix stored properly will easily last 1-2 years after expiration date.

The Funfetti frosting was 8 months out of date and the frosting part was totally fine. The sprinkles were definitely not safe to eat. This is probably because the sprinkles were exposed at the top of the container, so they most likely went rancid due to exposure to light and temperature.

If these had been in a separate sealed bag, they probably would have been fine. I think the visual appeal of being able to see the sprinkles on the top of the container, was also what caused them to go bad.

Frosting without sprinkles, will probably be fine 1-2 years after the “best by” date on the packaging if it is stored correctly.

As long as you use your 5 senses and common sense when using expired cake mix and frosting, you will be totally fine to use it. If anything seems off or not normal, don’t hesitate to just throw it away.

For more information on expired food products, check out “Can you eat expired Boil in Bag Rice?” and “Can I eat expired Oyster Crackers?“