How do I change or multiply the batter to fit a 12 inch pan?

Hi--- how many cups of batter does this recipe yield? I read that a 8 inch cake pan should hold about 4 cups of batter for one layer. If this is so, would you say the recipe yields about 12 cups? I am looking to convert this to a 12 inch cake pan and need two layers. I need to correctly calculate how to produce enough batter for two 12 inch layers.

Alaina
  • Posted by: Alaina
  • May 24, 2019
  • 2859 views
  • 3 Comments
Recipe question for: Spiced chocolate red wine cake

3 Comments

Smaug
Smaug May 24, 2019
A twelve inch pan has somewhat more than twice the surface area of an eight inch (actually x 2 1/4), so to produce a layer of equal thickness (which is usually what you want with a cake) you would need to increase the batter by that amount. Baking time shouldn't be significantly effected.
 
Nancy
Nancy May 24, 2019
There are charts out there of baking pan volume capacity (King Arthur, allrecipes, etc), but most don't have a 12" pan.
If you have Rose Levy Beranbaum CAKE BIBLE, look in the wedding cake section at the back of the book - I think she has info there on large pans for making tiered cakes. Also good advice for making and handling large cakes.
Short of that, I reverted to old geometry lessons and figured
• volume of each pan (about 100 cubic inches for 8" round by 2" high; about 225 cu in for 12" round by 2" high)
• volume of original recipe (fills 3 pans 8" round, so about 300 cu in)
• volume you want to make (fill 2 pans 12" round, so about 450 cu in)
• therefore, you need to make 1.5x original recipe to fill your two 12" pans.
Good luck and let us know how the big cake turns out.
 
Alaina
Alaina May 25, 2019
Thank you so much for the information!
 
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