Does anyone know how to scale up cake recipes?
Posted by ofgoddessstature on May 10, 2008 · Member since Sep 2005 · 27 posts
I'm making a few cakes for my friends engagement party and I have cake recipes for 8" cakes and am looking to make them aroud 10-12". I'm doing the Chocolate Raspberry cake & the Carrot cake from VWAV (along with a white cake, coconut cake, and peanut butter banana truffle cake) if that helps. Thanks in advance!
If you are going from an 8" to a 12" you could just multiply all the ingredients by 1.5 and let it cook a tad longer. You'll need to keep close tabs on it, it won't be 50% longer. Use the knife test and keep and eye on it. I just had a good bit of success with scaling that way, then splitting the batter into several types of pans for a bicycle cake for my husband. It just took a little bit of babysitting.
You have a lot to do; that's an impressive list of cakes! ;)b
Good luck!
... bicycle cake for my husband.
that is awesome! do you have a picture?
I do (vegweb has taught me to document my cooking in the most obsessive way) ::)
Notice it is Bianchi blue (to match his roadie).
Cute! ;)b
aaaactually, since the radius is increasing 1.5 times, you'd have to multiply the recipe by 2.25 to get the same volume.
(nerd here)
aaaactually, since the radius is increasing 1.5 times, you'd have to multiply the recipe by 2.25 to get the same volume.
(nerd here)
Yes, this is best. That will take it from an 8 inch cake to a 12 inch cake without increasing the depth. I think that's key. Once you increase the depth, you could have funky problems with the middle not getting cooked. The extra cooking time won't be proportional though, so vigilance is key, like nutdragon said.
If you need help, google does conversions for baking measurements too. So, if you have, say, 0.75 cup in the original: that's 0.75 * 2.25 = 1.6875 cups. But you don''t know how many 0.6875 is off the top of your head, so you can convert to tablespoons by typing "0.6875 cups to tablespoons" into google. 11 tablespoons. So that's 1 cup + 11 tablespoons total.
You'd probably be safe just doubling it as well.
pray tell, where is this peanut butter banana truffle cake (and can i have it)?
aaaactually, since the radius is increasing 1.5 times, you'd have to multiply the recipe by 2.25 to get the same volume.
(nerd here)
Sorry, that's using higher math, ick. Does that relate to the circumference or require pi in any way? :P
I guess the point is to keep the proportions the same as the original recipe, but pay attention when you bake them. As KMK said, as long as you don't get the batter too thick in the pan, you should be able to finesse your way trough it. Have fun with it!
it does involve pi, but pi cancels out.
see:
area = pi(r)squared
(depth is the same, so we ain't doin' volume)
the ratio of the 12" area to the 8" pan area is:
(pi(1.5r)squared)/(pi(r)squared) which cancels out to give 1.5squared, or 2.25.
Doubling would be easier though :D Oh well.
it does involve pi, but pi cancels out.
see:
area = pi(r)squared
(depth is the same, so we ain't doin' volume)
the ratio of the 12" area to the 8" pan area is:
(pi(1.5r)squared)/(pi(r)squared) which cancels out to give 1.5squared, or 2.25.
Doubling would be easier though :D Oh well.
That just made my bran hurt. :hrmm: