Hello:
I am making 2 cakes for a party on Sunday which need to serve 40-45 people. I’ve settled on a chocolate cake w/ a filling comprised of a layer of caramel and a layer of raspberry ganache (both already made) and Woody’s Lemon Luxury Cake. I was originally going to make a 12” chocolate cake and a 9” lemon, but now am thinking I’d like them to match and want to go w/ both of them at 10”.
I have a couple of questions: First, do all of you experienced bakers think that both of those cakes together will be enough to serve that many people? It is a party from 5-9 w/ appetizers offered throughout, but no dinner. My other question is my ongoing inability to figure out the Rose Factor. I worked it out for the chocolate cake because I can use the wedding cake base choc cake recipe in the back of TCB, but I cannot figure out how to convert the Woody’s Lemon from a 9” pan to a 10” pan. I’d so appreciate it if anyone has advice for me.
I plan to bake on Saturday AM, and look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks…Gaela

If you use the Deep Chocolate passion in RHC, I don’t think you’d need adjust for the Rose factor as a 9” is pretty close in size to the 10”.  I know the wedding recipe allows for a bit more batter than the German Choc cake (Julie had a post about this if I recall correctly??)—anyway, if you go with the german chocolate recipe as is, you can scale the recipe up by about 1.23-1.25 times the 9” recipe.  The deep choco passion goes wonderfully with the raspberry ganache!

Thanks for the response Sherrie. Do you think that 2 10” cakes would be enough for 40 people?

Sorry, this might be after the fact, but I’ll still post in case others might be looking for the same info. 

The Deep Chocolate Passion is a (non-traditional) chiffon, and if you look at the wedding cake recipes, you can see that leavening does not change when pan size goes up or down.  That is, leavening is scaled along with the rest of the recipe and doesn’t need an additional Rose Factor adjustment. 

Yes, if you scale the wedding cake recipe to your pan size (72.3% of the first batch for two 9x2 layers), you will get a little more batter and a layer that is about 1.5” tall, versus the Ger Choc Cake, which is a little less batter and about 1.25” tall.

I just made two 10x2 layers of this over the weekend, and the scale factor I used was 86.6% of the first batch (i.e., the 9” and 6” batch).  They turned out perfectly.  I syruped them with the milk choc syrup (same factor) and frosted with white chocolate mousseline.  When scaling the leavening for this recipe, I first scaled the baking soda, then went down to the nearest even measurement.  The remainder, I multiplied by four and added to the baking powder.  That way, the more powerful leavener was fully accounted for and any small discrepancy between scaling calculations and measuring spoons was mimimized. 

Getting 40 servings out of 10 inch layers might be tight- you’ll have to be careful and cut small pieces.  I made two-layer cakes of the 6”, 8” and 10” and served about 70-75, cutting pieces that were moderate- not too small, but not large, either.

Be sure to use cake strips and not to grease the sides of the pan for the best shape.

Bang on Julie, I thought I’d add though that Rose has an adjustment for really large sheet cakes (12” x 18”)—in case anyone comes across this.  It’s in RHC (not in my hands at the moment).  I made the Deep Choco Passion this weekend (5 batches of the 12” x 2 cake recipe) and made 10— 9 x13” rectangular cakes—got that recipe memorized—and it turned out just fine!

Wow, Sherrie, sounds like you made cake for an army!!!  Glad it all turned out well:)

Felt like it too, Julie.  I was wishing I had a giant oven, 10 pans (of course if that was the case I could use full sheet pans!) and a Hobart!  One batch and it would have been done!  The joys of a home baker attempting to produce large volumes of baking!