The Secret of the 9 Inch Cake Pan is excerpted from “Baking as a Business.” by Helen S. Fletcher.  The book is also available on Kindle.

Sometime into my professional baking career, I discovered The Secret of the 9 Inch Cake Pan. When we first started making wedding cakes, it was hit or miss. Since we made everything from scratch and there was no internet, I would simply guess at how much batter to make. Sometimes we were right on, sometimes not enough and sometimes too much. In any case, not a good way of conducting business. I have no idea when or how I came up with this formula but it works and we used it at the bakery for scaling cakes up or down.

This three-tiered cake is a great example of The Secret of the 9 Inch Cake Pan.  The middle layer is 9 inches.  The top layer is 6″ and the bottom layer is 12″.  Calculating the batter needed for the cake was easy using the Secret of the 9 Inch Cake Pan. Three and one-half recipes of the 9″ cake layer would be needed. Continue reading →