cake tin sizes

You can convert the recipe to "baker's percentages" and then scale the recipe up or down to fit the pan.

Thanks very much! I went to that site however and found conversions for bread but not cakes. That means I am not sure how to convert the eggs, sugar or other things that are in a cake but not in bread!

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Then you missed the fundamental concept. You could apply this to any baked goods: cakes, bread, cookies, ... You first convert all the ingredients to weight if necessary. For instance, if the recipe calls for 1 cup of AP flour, you have to convert that to 120 grams of flour. One egg is 50 grams. Since you are in the UK, I skipped this point as I assumed you were already using weight measures instead of cup measurements.

Once the ingredients are converted to weight, you choose a reference ingredient (usually the one with the highest weight, like flour) and make that the 100% reference. You calculate the ratios from that as explained in the many sites at the link I posted. So if your cake recipe calls for 300g of flour and you want to increase the recipe to fit a 20% larger pan, the flour weight is increased to 360 grams. If the sugar is 100% of the flour weight, it now 360 grams, also. If the fat is 20% of the flour weight, it now becomes 72g. If the weight of the eggs is 30% of the flour weight, then you use 108 grams of eggs. Technically, the amount of leavening agent doesn't increase proportionally as the pan size increases, but within the limits of the home kitchen, I wouldn't worry about it. For very small measurement like "1/4 tsp. of nutmeg" I just estimate.

If you need to calculate the weight of given amount of an ingredient, there are a couple of good methods. First, nutrition labels (at least in the US) state the serving size in both cup and weight measurements. For instance, AP flours says the serving size is 1/4 cup or 30 grams. Therefore a cup of AP flour is 120 grams. If that doesn't work, you can find the data by searching the USDA nutrition database:

you search on "egg" you will find many choices including "whole, raw egg"After selecting that choice you will find that one large egg is 50 grams. I pencil in the weights and percentages in my cookbooks as I go.

Wow thanks for the detail-- that makes perfect sense. Great.

maria

No problem. It all seems very complex until you do it once.

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Maria: I have a chart that shows the quantities needed for rich fruit cake for ALL the standard round and square tins. If you like, I could scan it and e-mail it to you. It's from a 30 year old paperback put out by Good Housekeeping in the UK. It uses weights, not cups. Cheers Graham

Remember also one point that some people miss. If you're trying to fit a pan, quantities must go up as the *square* of the given pan dimension if you want the same thickness, or as the *cube* if you want the same aspect ratio (i.e. the thickness maintains the same proportion). So, for instance, if your recipe was given for a 22cm (9") pan, and your pan is 30cm, if you wanted the cake to be as thick as the original, then you'd need to increase the ratios by (30/22)^2 = 1.9 times. And if you wanted it to be proportional in appearance, not a wider, thinner-looking cake, you'd need to increase the ratio by (30/22)^3 = 2.5 times. Throw any baking times out the window. The larger cake will take longer, but it won't be 1.9 times or

2.5 times. It will be somewhat shorter than 1.9 in general for the thin version, and probably a little longer than 2.5 for the same-aspect-ratio version. This can have an impact on center versus outside texture and browning. You may need a slightly lower temperature for the large version if the recipe has a very high sugar content or sensitive ingredients like chocolate. Lots of variables here. It's better to test the cake during baking rather than try to scale baking times up or down.