The Secret of the 9 Inch Cake Pan

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.

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First of all, you have to ascertain the amount of batter needed for the number of layers your recipe makes using a 9” round cake pan.  The Chocolate Cake Post is a good starting point.  It gives you amounts for 2, 3 and 4 layers made from the same recipe.  Then you simply add a x1 to each ascending layer size unless otherwise noted.  In other words, you would double that recipe for a 12 inch cake, triple it for a 14 inch cake, etc.

The chart below will tell you how many times you need to multiply a recipe using a 9 inch cake pan as your base to obtain a larger or smaller cake size. All of these are round pans. We will discuss square pans later.

I hope The Secret of the 9 Inch Cake Pan will help you if you need to increase the size of the cake you are making.  It was a life saver at the bakery.

Round Pan Size Number of Recipes
6” =  x½ of a 9 inch
8” =  Less ¼ of a 9 inch
9” =  x 1
10” increase 9” by ⅓
12” =  x 2
14” =  x 3
16”  = x 4
18” =  x 5
20”  = x 7 (noticed I increased it here)
22” =  x 8
24”  = x 9

Square Pan Size
Increase the 9x2 inch recipe by ⅓ as the square inches in a square pan are approximately ⅓ more than a round pan. When you have that measurement, follow the formula above increasing as necessary. A square inch chart can be found at https://pastrieslikeapro.com/2013/09/pan-size-conversions/#.Wm3z_GVh2Rs.

Other posts regarding layer cakes can be found in Baking Information- These are some of them.
Cake Pan Prep or How to get a Flat Layer - This is indispensable to baking cake layer without them humping up in the middle.
Cocoa Fundamentals - Natural vs. Dutched - Which cocoa to use where
Cake Talk - How to assemble a cake
Drying a Fondant Covered Cake - Refrigerating a fondant cake causes the fondant to condensate.  There is an easy way to dry it out.
Flour Used in Baking - A discussing of the different types of wheat flour used in cakes
Fluid Ounce Conversions
Ingredient Conversion Chart - This chart gives  you volume, grams and ounces of ingredients
Measuring for Baking - Discusses scales, cups, spoons and the importance of correctly measuring with each one.
Pan Size Conversions - This features a square inch chart of pans as well as how to obtain the square inches in a pan.
Top Ingredient Substitutions for Baking - This blog talks about making substitutions in recipes and how to do it if you are out of something and you happen to be baking at midnight.
Vanilla - There is more than one vanilla and each one brings something different to the recipe.
Volume Conversion Chart - An easy chart of quarts, pints, cups, ounces and liters.

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