You’ve set aside a rainy, Sunday morning or a relaxing evening. You’ve gathered all your ingredients. Found the recipe of your dreams. You’re going to make a cake. As you’re pulling out whisks and bowls and measuring spoons, you realize the instructions call for an 8-inch round pan, but you only have a 9-inch round pan. Or an 8×8-inch square pan. Or, god forbid, a 9×13-inch rectangular dish.
Even if you don’t have the cake pan your recipe recommends, don’t give up on that cake! We spoke with Duff Goldman, celebrity chef and founder of Charm City Cakes, which has cakes available to order on Goldbelly, and asked him if it’s ever okay to use a different pan than what the recipe calls for. “Oh, dude, 100 percent,” he said. “Use what you got.” Good bakers make it work! You’ll want to be smart about it, though. There are a few things to consider in these situations to make sure your bake is a success.
What to do if your cake pan is too big
Goldman gave us plenty of tips to help deal with the wrong size of pan, starting with the one thing you don’t want to do — have too little cake batter for your pan. “You just have to make sure that your pan isn’t so big that it’s only going to come up a quarter inch,” he said. “You’ve got to make sure you’re putting enough batter in whatever pan that you’re using. So you might have to adjust your recipe.”
Ideally you want to fill your pan halfway or a “tiny bit more than halfway” with batter before baking. So, especially if you have a too-big pan, but in other instances too, it never hurts to double (or triple!) your recipe. This ensures that you have enough batter for an ideal, even bake. The general rule to remember for filling baking pans with batter is that thicker, heavier batters can fill ⅔ of the pan while lighter, spongier batters should really only fill half the pan, as they rise much more.
What to do if your cake pan is too small
What do you do if you have too much batter for your pan? Maybe the recipe calls for a 9×13-inch pan but you only have a small 8-inch round pan. Well, overfilling your pan can make your cake overflow, so you definitely want to avoid that. And is it really such a problem to have extra cake batter? Goldman doesn’t think so. “I always have cupcake pans around and I have tons of liners,” he said. “So whenever I have extra batter, just drop it in the cupcakes and my daughter’s got a snack when she comes home from school.” Have you ever heard of a better solution than “make more cake”? Yeah, we didn’t think so!
Goldman notes that if you are using a smaller pan than the recipe calls for, you can probably bake your cake at a slightly hotter temperature for a slightly shorter amount of time than the recipe states, though you don’t have to change the oven temperature if that feels too risky. For example, if you are using extra cake batter from a 9-inch round cake recipe to make cupcakes, you may only need to bake the cupcakes for 18-23 minutes at 350, whereas that 9-inch cake may have taken 30-35 minutes at the same temperature. Making that small change to the baking time will ensure your cake stays moist throughout its whole bake.
What to do if you don’t have a springform, bundt, or other special pan
If you’re not an experienced baker or you just don’t have room in your kitchen for equipment that you only use a few times a year, you may not have special pans on hand, like springform or bundt pans. But that’s okay! You can absolutely use a regular baking pan instead of a springform pan. You’ll just want to make sure that it’s well-greased and/or lined with parchment paper.
To fashion your own bundt pan, you’ll need a small oven-proof container, like a Pyrex bowl, and ideally some pie weights. Place the bowl in the middle of your regular cake pan, fill it with the pie weights to keep it in place, then pour your cake batter around it, and voilà! You have a bundt cake. Don’t let your lack of loaf pan or jelly roll pan derail your cake-making adventure. There are simple ways to convert recipes for every pan you can think of. Goldman thinks everyone should learn how to bake a cake, and it’s clear that cake baking should be as accessible and stress-free as possible.
