How to Calculate Cake Recipes

Have you ever wondered how to calculate cake recipes for odd shaped cake tins?

This is a topic I have been wanting to share for quite a while now. It comes to mind every time I bake a cake that is not in the usual square or round shape. So last weekend, when I baked a domed pound cake, I decided to snap a few pictures on how I go about estimating how much cake batter I needed for the cake. So here I am writing about how I normally calculate cake recipes for non round and square cake tins.

How to Calculate Cake Recipes

This is the exact same technique I used when I baked a 3D car cake in a cake pan. And I use the same technique for all my other cakes which are baked in non round and non square cake pans.

How to Calculate Cake Recipes

Here's what you need to calculate your cake recipes:

This is what I use to calculate and come up with the estimation:

6 inch round cake tin (since I was using a calculated recipe for a 6 inch round cake for the estimation)
Water
A large measuring cup
The actual cake pan to be used for a particular cake project.

And this is what you need to do:

In order for this technique to work, you must know how much batter will your cake recipe yield for a standard round tin. For example, if your recipe is for a 6 inch round cake, you will need to know much will the cake batter fill the 6 inch cake tin, i.e., whether it will fill half of the tin or all the way to ⅔ of it. Only if you know this will this calculation technique work.

For instance, if your recipe normally fills two thirds of a single 6 inch round tin, you will need to fill it with water until it is two thirds full. Then, pour the water into a measuring jug. Note the measurement. In my example, my 6 inch cake pan fills 800 ml water. So, this is how much batter my recipe will yield. If my odd shaped cake pan requires more than 800 ml batter, I will have to scale up my recipe accordingly.

To determine how much batter my dome-shaped tin requires, I fill it with water all the way until it is about ¾ inches to the rim. This is how much I want the cake batter to fill my cake tin. I then pour the water into a large measuring cup. In my example here, the dome-shaped bowl requires almost 1000 ml batter. This is more than the 800 ml for a 6 inch round tin. So I will have to scale up my recipe in order to have enough batter to fill my dome-shaped bowl.

The formula to calculate:

To calculate how much scaling is required, you can use this formula:

Batter for odd shaped cake tin (in ml) / Batter for standard round or square tin (in ml) = number of times the recipes needs to be scaled up or down

I have illustrated this in graphics below.

How to Calculate Cake Recipes - Step by Step:

Fill your standard round cake pan with water, right up to the level where your recipe would fill. You would only be able to do this if you remember the point at which your cake tin is filled with the cake batter based on your experience of baking the cake previously.

Pointing to the water level in a cake tin filled with water

How to Calculate Cake Recipes

My calculated butter pound cake recipe (assuming this is the recipe I am going to use for the dome-shaped bowl) for a 6 inch round cake pan would normally fill up to two thirds of the height, so I fill a 6 inch round cake pan with water until its two thirds full.
Next, I pour the water into a large measuring cup and note the measurement.

Pouring water from a cake tin into a measuring jug

The measurement is 800 ml.
Next I repeat the same process with my odd shaped cake pan, in this example, the dome shaped bowl. I fill it up with water up to the level where I want my cake batter to fill up.

Pointing to the water level in a bowl filled with water

How to Calculate Cake Recipes

Then, I pour the water into a large measuring cup and note its measurement. In this example, the dome-shaped bowl requires 1000 ml batter.

Formula to calculate cake recipes:

Based on the measures above, here is the formula to calculate the required amount of cake batter for the odd shaped cake pan:

Batter for odd shaped cake tin (in ml) / Batter for standard round or square tin (in ml) = number of times the recipes needs to be scaled up or down.

Using this formula in the example above, the equation to calculate would be as follows:

1000 ml / 800 ml = 1.25 times

This means I will need to scale my recipe by 1.25 times from the original recipe which was meant for a 6 inch tin. To do this, each ingredient in the calculated recipe for a 6 inch round cake tin must be multiplied by 1.25 times. This way I will have the required amount of cake batter for the dome-shaped bowl.

And that's it. This is how I calculate cake recipes for odd shaped cake tins and pans.

I hope this will be able to help you to calculate cake recipes for your baking projects!

Happy Calculating & Baking 🙂