Cake pans and batter

Describe the pan the recipe is for — its shape, size and how many — and the pan you want to bake it in. Pick a standard size or type the dimensions; a pan’s depth matters, so give it. Shapes are round, square, rectangle, sheet (Swiss roll), loaf, springform, tube (angel food), bundt (by capacity, as they are sold) and muffin tins. Each shape has a usual fill — layer pans and traybakes half full, loaves, tubes, bundts and cupcakes about two-thirds — or set your own Fill %.

You get the factor to scale the recipe by, the batter in each pan (by volume and, for the batter type you pick, by weight), the batter depth, and the bake time and temperature. Or keep the recipe as it is says how full the new pan would be, and warns when it would overflow.

The bake time comes from the effective thickness of the batter: the path heat takes to reach the middle from the oven floor, the open top and the walls. For a wide layer it is the batter depth; close walls (a loaf, a cupcake, the tube of a bundt) shorten it. The time grows with about the 1.2 power of it, a rule of thumb fitted to typical bake times at 175 °C (350 °F): 9 in layers 25–30 minutes, cupcakes 18–22, sheet sponges 10–15, loaves 55–65 and bundts 50–65. When the new batter is much deeper (5 cm or more), the oven drops about 15 °C (25 °F) and the time rises about 15 %, so the edges do not overbake before the centre sets. Is it done? gives the tests for the batter — skewer, spring-back, and the centre temperature on a probe (93–99 °C for most cakes, about 65–68 °C for cheesecake; King Arthur Baking’s figures).

Scale the recipe takes a pasted ingredient list and scales it by the factor with the recipe scaler's parser, keeping the units as written or converting to US or metric (metric weighs the dry ingredients).

List the tiers — round or square, the size, how many layers you bake for each and whether you tort (split) each baked layer into two or three — plus the pan depth and fill, the finished height of each tier, the filling thickness and the batter. You get, for each tier, the batter per pan (weigh it into the pans for even layers), the cake layers, how tall each must be after levelling, and the servings; then the totals, how many batches of your recipe that is, the filling and the buttercream for the coats, and a side view of the cake.

Servings are counted by area against the usual conventions for a cake about 10 cm (4 in) tall: a wedding slice is 1 × 2 in (2.5 × 5 cm), a party slice 1½ × 2 in, and an everyday dessert wedge about 5 × 8 cm. Taller tiers give proportionally more.

Give the cake’s shape, size, height and layers and the frosting and filling you use. You get the filling, a thin crumb coat (2 mm) and the final coat (4 mm) — each thickness is editable — in grams and volume, with a waste allowance, and typical proportions to make that amount of American buttercream, Swiss meringue buttercream, cream cheese frosting or stabilised whipped cream.

Ganache gives the chocolate-to-cream ratio by weight for dark, milk and white chocolate and each use — glaze, drip, soft filling, firm (sharp edges or truffles) and whipped — and the grams of each for the cake above, or for any amount you type. White and milk chocolate need more chocolate for the same set because they have less cocoa butter and cocoa solids. The table shows every ratio at once.

Standard US pans and metric tins with their area, brim volume, the batter they take at the usual fill, and the pan nearest in area — so you can see that a 9 × 13 in pan and a 23 × 33 cm traybake are the same pan, and that two 8 in rounds are close to one 9 in square.