How long doCommercial cakes and muffinslast in the pantry?

Freezing changes the unit, not just the number

Here the freezer does not so much extend the answer as replace it. 10 days in the opened fridge becomes 6 months in the freezer: 18 times longer, and days turning into months. The pantry from the day of purchase figure alone spans 3 days to 7 days, a factor of 2.3.

Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item

All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage. Within Baked Goods it is filed under Bakery.

• In the freezer6 months
• Unopened · in the pantry3 days to 7 days
• Once opened · in the fridge7 days to 10 days

Turning the range into a date

Two clocks run on this item: one from the day it went into storage and one from the day the seal broke. Both are listed below, 3 rows in all.

• In the freezerUse by6 months after the day you bought it
• Unopened · in the pantryUse by3 days to 7 days after the day you bought it
• Once opened · in the fridgeUse by7 days to 10 days after the day you opened it

Is this window about safety or about taste?

The answer at the top of this page reads 3 days to 7 days in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Commercial cakes and muffins keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, judge it by look and smell: this window rates how good the food will be, not the day it becomes a hazard.

The figure in the fridge once opened here is not settled by this record. The same page carries windows of more than one kind, so which sentence applies depends on which row you are reading, not on the food. Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.

It is past the date. Now what?

Say the calculator above puts Commercial cakes and muffins past its 3 days to 7 days in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold takes the whole package out rather than the slice it grew on, and so does a musty or old-oil smell in a flour or a mix.

The USDA's limit for perishable food standing at room temperature is 2 hours, or 1 hour when the kitchen is above 90 °F, and that clock runs whatever the storage figure says. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.

Is that a long time?

2 items in the Baked Goods list keep exactly as long as this item, 10 days, so they all share place 40 of 52 rather than being put in an order the data does not support. Among the 244 foods the USDA also gives a pantry figure, it keeps longer than 9% of them.

Items that behave the same way

Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 4 days to 10 days against the 10 days of this item, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.

• Herbskeeps exactly as long
• Cheesecakekeeps 5 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit pies, apple, peach, blueberry, apricot, cherry, blackberrykeeps 1 day in the pantryup to 1 week in the fridge once opened
• Muffinkeeps 3 days in the pantrycommercially packaged
• Quichekeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened
• Cream pies, banana cream, coconut cream, butterscotchkeeps 3 days in the fridge once opened

Products the USDA rates in the same places

Only 3 other products in the whole file carry the same set of rated places as this one, freezer from the day of purchase, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator after opening: Commercial bread products, Fruit cake and Nacho cheese. That is 3 products out of 466, which makes this a rare shape of record rather than a common one, and it is worth knowing that the comparison below is drawn from a very small group. Of the 3 shown, 3 keep longer than this one.

• Commercial bread products14 days sealed in the pantry
• Fruit cake6 months sealed in the pantryup to 12 months in the fridge once opened
• Nacho cheese2 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 2 years sealed in the pantry

Closest by shape, but not an exact match — they share most of these places, not all of them.

• Herbs7 days sealed in the fridge
• Cheesecake5 days in the fridge once opened
• Dairy filled eclairs2 days in the fridge once opened
• Doughnuts1 day sealed in the pantryup to 2 days in the fridge once opened
• Garlic1 month sealed in the pantry

The rest of the Bakery shelf

The USDA puts this product on the Bakery shelf together with 15 others, and 5 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Pastries at 14 months down to Macaroons at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Cheesecake, Fruit pies and Muffin, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Baked Goods the same product ranks 40 of 52. The middle of the shelf is Muffin, at 7 days. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Bakery inside Baked Goods.

• Cheesecake7 days5 days in the fridge once opened
• Fruit pies1 week1 day in the pantry
• Muffin7 days3 days in the pantry
• Quiche5 days3 days in the fridge once opened
• Cream pies4 days3 days in the fridge once opened
• Dairy filled eclairs3 days2 days in the fridge once opened
• Doughnuts2 days1 day sealed in the pantry
• Chiffon pies2 days1 day in the fridge once opened

If it has to keep longer than this

If it has to keep longer than 10 days, the Baked Goods aisle gives 39 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Commercial bread products at 3 weeks against this one's 10 days; after it come Garlic, Cookies and Bread. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 8 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Quiche and Cream pies among them. The largest step the category offers is Spice/spices at 3 years.

• Commercial bread products3 weeks14 days sealed in the pantry
• Garlic1 month1 month sealed in the pantry
• Cookies3 months2 months sealed in the pantry
• Bread3 months2 months in the fridge
• Flavored or herb mixes6 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Biscuit or pancake mix9 months9 months sealed in the pantry
• Fruit cake12 months6 months sealed in the pantry
• Flour12 months6 months in the pantry once opened

The record this page is built from

This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 197 — the source’s own number for it, not a position — one of the 661 rows in the snapshot. That row fills 3 of the nine storage slots with a time, and the source prints its binding figure in days, so the window at the top of this page is the source's own number untouched. It is filed under Bakery inside Baked Goods, which is where every shelf comparison on this page comes from.

Where these numbers come from

Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.

Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.

Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.

Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.

USDA index terms: cake, Commercial cakes, muffin, muffins

KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.