I purchased 6 new cake pans….really nice, except they are 8x3. I am wondering if this will have any effect on recipes that call for 9 or 81/2 in pans. I make cakes for a restaurant and was trying to cut back on size instead of having to raise the price. Will it make any difference in the cakes?

You may find your results will be a bit different - only one way to know for sure… give them a try.  Please report back .

Yvonne, you didn’t specify the height of the original recipes, but I can tell you from experience if you try to bake a 9 x 1.5 cake in a 9 x 3 pan, the results are terrible——the outside will be overdone and the center will take forever to cook—the extra height shields the middle from getting done.  It is best to use the amount designed for that height—or scale your recipes appropriately—so a recipe for 2 8x1.5 pans would make 1 8x3 cake.

yvonne,

what you should really do is figure out how much batter your recipe makes and fill your pans according to how much batter it takes to make a layer.

Use water and a glass measuring cup to fill your pans to the preferred height (usually 2/3) and then fill with batter using that measure. If you plan to make smaller cakes then I’m guessing you won’t want to make the full 3 inch height.

However, it may work to your advantage to make 2 large layers which can be torted into 4. Then you can use 3 of the layers per cake and have one left over for the next cake. In other words make 3 8x3 inch cakes and get two full 3-layered cakes out of it.

jen

For what it’s worth - Sylvia Weinstock’s Sweet Celebrations book calls for baking her cake recipes in 3” deep pans.  There are some in Martha Stewart’s new Wedding Cakes book too.

The trick to using 3” deep pans is to resist the urge to fill them too much.  If you fill to halfway, the cake will bake far better than if you fill it 2/3 or 3/4 full.  We’re used to what the pan looks like for a more shallow (2” high or 1.5” high) depth so when you get a deeper pan, you naturally want to fill it to what you’re used to seeing.  That’s what makes the cake bake poorly. 

Usually I scale the batter by weight into the pans so I know they will bake consistently, but this took years to work out (all the different recipes, different pan sizes/shapes) and is different for the various recipes I use. 

You might want to try to make a batch of cake, and then scale out into the pans at various heights/weights and see how well they bake.  You will probably end up with being able to torte the cake into three layers; but they might be slightly thinner layers than with the other pans.

You may want to do a search on Rose’s blog.  She has mentioned that she doesn’t recommend baking in 3” pans b/c the cakes do not bake as well, and I believe she says the texture/quality is affected quite a bit.

I have had the same train of thought, however, because I would love to get more consistent, thicker layers out of each baking time.

Well I thank all of you for your quick responses….this is my first time using the forum. I will attempt the half full pans and simply torte them, which I feel makes a better looking cake when cut. I will test them out and adjust temps and cooking times if needed.

In the Whimsical Bakehouse cookbook, they suggest to pour 2/3 of the batter in one pan and 1/3 of the batter in another pan.  Then you only have to torte once to get three layers and you don’t need to buy 3 pans.

Does anybody else use this method?  Just wondering how it works for others.  Obviously, the baking time would be different.

GolfAddict - 21 July 2008 11:13 AM

In the Whimsical Bakehouse cookbook, they suggest to pour 2/3 of the batter in one pan and 1/3 of the batter in another pan.  Then you only have to torte once to get three layers and you don’t need to buy 3 pans.

Does anybody else use this method?  Just wondering how it works for others.  Obviously, the baking time would be different.

Doesn’t sound like a good way to bake 3 cake layers to me, but I’ve never tried it.  I’d rather bake 2 full sized layers, split each in half, then use them however I like.

Patrincia - 21 July 2008 12:28 PM

I’d rather bake 2 full sized layers, split each in half, then use them however I like.

That is actually what I usually do and just end up with 4 layers.  But I made the All-Occasion Yellow Downy last night in two 8x2 pans.  After barely trimming the tops, I ended up with 2 layers about 1.5” tall.  I torted each for make 4.

But my husband brought it up, and I agreed that the frosting overwhelmed the cake.  (And before you ask, I did not use the MBC recipe.  I used a choc BC recipe from CI, which used powd sugar and butter, which we normally like just fine.)  I don’t necessarily think it was the taste of the choc BC that overwhelmed it but rather the ratio of frosting to cake.  So I thought I might try doing 3 layers rather than four to cut done on the frosting.  (FYI - I didn’t use a large amount of frosting between my layers because I thought I might run out, so I don’t think it was the amount I used.)

BC to cake ratio is one of those things you have to play around with to get the feel for how much is enough without going overboard - a fun and tasty science .

I think Jeanne’s on to something when she says don’t fill them too full.  I just baked the All-American Chocolate Cake recipe in a 6x2 pan, filled too full (quite close to the top).  I knew this wasn’t ideal, but the batter was left over from a large batch of mini-cupcakes, and I was just trying to use it up.

The texture difference between the over-filled pan and the properly filled cupcakes was quite noticeable.  The 6x2 cake became denser in texture near the bottom, and was drier and more crumbly due to the overbaking necessary to get the center done.  The batter was identical in both the cupcakes and the 6x2, from the same bowl, and baked in the same oven, so the inferior result was due to the overfilled pan. 

Patrincia’s trick of using a flower nail to conduct heat to the center might help, but I think a deeper layer might also need more structure, which compromises the tenderness of the cake. 

Sometimes it takes a lot of mistakes to fully appreciate how perfect Rose’s recipes are!

Julie