How long doesFruit cakelast in the pantry?
The freezer changes nothing here
The USDA gives this item the same window either way: 12 months in the opened fridge and 12 months in the freezer. Freezing is not a mistake here, it simply buys nothing, and the opened fridge is the cheaper place to keep it.
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 freezer12 months
- Unopened · in the pantry6 months
- Once opened · in the fridge12 months
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 by12 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by6 months after the day you bought it
- Once opened · in the fridgeUse by12 months after the day you opened it
Is this window about safety or about taste?
The answer at the top of this page reads 6 months in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Fruit cake 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.
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 Fruit cake past its 6 months 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 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?
9 items in the Baked Goods list keep exactly as long as this item, 12 months, so they all share place 25 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 30% of them.
Items that behave the same way
All 6 of the 6 items nearest this item keep exactly as long as it does, 12 months, so the ranking around it is a tie rather than an order.
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, Commercial cakes and muffins 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, 1 keeps longer than this one.
- Commercial bread products14 days sealed in the pantry
- Commercial cakes and muffins3 days sealed in the pantryup to 10 days 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.
- Flour6 months in the pantry once openedwhite
- Frosting or icing2 weeks in the fridge once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
- Oils3 months in the pantry once openedup to 12 months sealed in the pantry
- Nut oils6 months in the fridge once opened
- Tamarind paste6 months in the pantry once opened
The rest of the Bakery shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Bakery shelf together with 15 others, and 1 of them keeps longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Pastries at 14 months down to Macaroons at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Pastries, Cookies and Bread, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Baked Goods the same product ranks 25 of 52. The middle of the shelf is Muffin, at 7 days. The shelf is the source's own subcategory, Bakery inside Baked Goods.
- Pastries14 months5 days sealed in the pantry
- Cookies3 months2 months sealed in the pantry
- Bread3 months2 months in the fridge
- Commercial bread products3 weeks14 days sealed in the pantry
- Commercial cakes and muffins10 days3 days sealed in the pantry
- Cheesecake7 days5 days in the fridge once opened
- Fruit pies1 week1 day in the pantry
- Muffin7 days3 days in the pantry
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 12 months, the Baked Goods aisle gives 19 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Cornstarch at 24 months against this one's 12 months; after it come Sugar, Chocolate and Cornmeal. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 18 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Flavored or herb mixes and Cookies among them. The largest step the category offers is Spice/spices at 3 years.
- Cornstarch24 months18 months in the pantry once opened
- Sugar24 months18 months in the pantry once opened
- Chocolate2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Cornmeal2 years6 months sealed in the pantry
- Vegetable oil sprays2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Shortening2 years6 months in the pantry once opened
- Chili powder2 years2 years in the pantry once opened
- Seasoning blends2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
The record this page is built from
This page is built from a single FoodKeeper row, record 203 — 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 binding figure on it is printed by the source in months, which is the unit this page keeps rather than converting it to days. 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, fruit
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.