Hi… I made my first TCB Moist chocolate Genoise.. it came out very nice, soft and lovely taste. In the book its mentioned not to up-scale or downscale the recipe. However I wanted a small cake of 6inc ,so I halved the ingredients so that I can get 1 9inch cake, but as i do not have 9inch pan. I decided to bake in 6inch pan and remaining batter in a smaller pan.

Questions :

After the batter was ready, I poured it into 6inch pan , and then in 8inch pan ( Wilton ) and still I had enough for 4inch pan. I was expecting that there will be the left over batter once i have used 6inch pan but how come so much of batter was left ????

My mathematics is little weak , I am big time confused and tensed by the pan measurements. In TCB in most of recipe 9inch x 2inch pan is being used . I have Wilton pans marked as 8 x1.2 and 20.3 x 3.81 ( is this a volume ? ).  Please someone explain me the pan measurements- I have a pan which says circumference 15cm, height 62mm and breadth 155mm.

Please rescue me Many thanks in advance

Kon’nichiwa again,
I love math. A round pan is a cylinder and the volume of a cylinder is… Area of the base times the height. Area of a circle is pi times the radius squared. So let us assume you filled the pans 1.5 inchs deep.
volume of 9” pan = 3.14 X 4.5 X 4.5 X 1.5 = 95.43 cubic inches
volume of 8” pan = 3.14 X 4 X 4 X 1.5 = 75.4 cubic inches
volume of 6” pan = 3.14 X 3 X 3 X 1.5 = 42.41 cubic inches
volume of 4” pan = 3.14 X 2 X 2 X 1.5 = 18.85 cubic inches

Here is the fun thing about math. Notice that the 4” pan has less than half the volume of a 6”. The 6” pan is just barely half of the 8”. Adding just an inch to the 8” pan swells the volume by nearly 1/3. Selecting a pan by its diameter is not a very good method because the relationship between diameter and volume is not linear. Small changes in the diameter cause big changes in the volume.

Since you filled 8” 6” 4” we know that you made 136.7 cubic inches of batter. The recipe was sized to fill 2 9” pans. If the recipe was supposed to fill those pans 2” deep then a half recipe would produce 127.23. Seems like there was more batter than there should have been but it will all be very sensitive to how deep you filled each pan.

As to your pan labels. The Wilton has both metric an inch measurements. 20.3 / 2.54 = 7.99 or @8”.
The other pan is strange since the circumference number doesn’t make sense. 155 / 25.4 = 6.1 or @ 6”.

Konichiwa again I am so glad and relieved after reading your post ..Many many thanks Now as you have mentioned that you love maths, so I have few more question for you.. For Chocolate fudge recipe, Rose has mentioned 9inch x 1 1/2 inch pan, and in notes it says if you have only 2inch pans, either do 2/3 of the recipe for 1 layer or 1 1/3 of the recipe for two layers.

If I am using 9inchx2inch pan ,
Now in this recipe cocoa used is - 85gms,
If making 1 layer cake I should use (85x2/3) 56gms of cocoa
If I am making 2 layers cake ( 85 x 1 1/3 = 42.5 +14.17 =56.67 )  I think I kind of lost it ...Please help!!!!

I guess my questions are silly, as I am newbie I get very confused and sometimes I wonder if 1/2 inch here and there would really make a difference ?? This pan 15cm, height 62mm and breadth 155mm is a non stick dark pan ( have 3 pans - 5.9/ 7.1 and 4.7)  , initially i bought these pans and now I read everywhere they are not that great. I get tempted to buy aluminium pans however I know it is a good investment but I have been spending a lot on cakes so in two minds. By the way If use these pans ( apart from adjusting temperature ) will it make big difference. Is it a bad idea to bake in these pans???

One last question on Sponge cake, if I bake one layer sponge cake and if I want to cut it into two layers is it a bad idea instead of using two pans ???

Thanks again !!

Hi!!!

Can’t say about the pans, but your first calculation is correct—the other one is off.

(85 x 2/3) = (85 x .66) = 56—perfect!

However, (85 x 1 1/3) = (85 + 28) = (85 x 1.33) = 113
So, to make two layers, you’d use 113g cocoa.

I’m always making the 1 1/2” recipes in 2” pans, and using the conversion makes a beautiful cake!  I think what happens if you DON’T use the extra batter is you get the same problem as baking a 2” recipe in a 3” pan—too much pan height to batter and it doesn’t bake correctly.

So if you want to make one layer, multiply everything by .66.
If you want to make two layers, multiply everything by 1.33.

It looks like your pan, at 15mm in height, is 2.4 inches.  I’m not sure if that will cause a problem or not, but someone else might know about that and the sponge cake!

Thanks Anne,
It is my understanding that extra pan depth can cause the cake to not be flat. This is not so much an issue if you are making a single layer. I find a bit of a dome appealing. On the other hand if the cake falls in the middle it will not be so attractive. We need one of the cake experts to help us out.

We need one of the cake experts to help us out.

Indeed, we do!!!

Many thanks for your help Anne and Gene

One Final question on Rose Factor, can it be applied to Sponge cakes as well ??

The Rose Factor is only for the butter cakes, specifically the all-american chocolate, the downy yellow, and the white velvet.  It can be used as a guide for the other butter cakes, but the leavening and baking times have not been tested.

For sponge cakes, there is no need to adjust leavening, so you just scale the recipe and go.  However, you do need to be careful about pan shape and layer depth.  For instance, a chiffon will not bake in a springform without formula adjustments.