Kim James 
As a person who shares recipes and often allows troubleshooting, I’m a firm adherent to this adage. But … Some rules are supposed to be bent, if not damaged. I’m no longer suggesting you must start making willy-nilly changes to whatever recipe you like. (And in case you do, please don’t email me to bitch!) However, there’s little integrated flexibility, especially in terms of pan sizes. Here are a few recommendations if you discover yourself inclined to bake in a distinctive pan that a recipe requires.
– Think about whether the recipe also has to be changed. Not each baked appropriate is amenable to changes. Brownies are quite forgiving, says cookbook creator Rose Levy Beranbaum (“The Cake Bible,” “The Baking Bible,” “Rose’s Baking Basics”). The batter isn’t finicky, and because you’re now not concerned approximately them growing a lot, you can without problems use a nine-inch pan instead of an eight-inch or vice versa. Following the equal good judgment, blondies come up with wiggle room, denser fruit desserts, pound cakes, or even espresso desserts.
Using a distinct size cake pan for a cheesecake (is fair, as, in an inch, that’s a bigger disparity than it sounds) is probably additionally k, Beranbaum says. Delicate sponge desserts, inclusive of genoise or angel meals, which have been calculated to paintings in a selected form pan for a particular amount of time to generate a particular quantity of carrying, aren’t as amenable to changes. On the opposite hand, changing a regular layer cake into cupcakes is quite safe, and shortbread is pretty effortlessly tailored into truffles.
– Do some comparing. The most important factor to do not forget when changing a pan length is volume, Beranbaum says. Note: I said volume and not the surface region. The surface area most effective considers the nicely exposed floor of the pan, as in period and width. That may be useful whilst considering the usage of pans of a comparable peak, particularly with meals (i.E. Brownies) that do not upward thrust a great deal.
But we’re in a 3-dimensional global here, so if we are talking about large amounts of batter and pans of various heights, you need to additionally remember how tall a pan is, which at the side of period and width influences how a lot batter a pan can keep. If you could already feel your eyes glazing over with the chance of math, unglaze, please! There are many handy reference charts and conversion guides in books and online that you can use to help determine whether or not your favored pan is similar to the only recipe requires. You can usually confirm or measure for yourself, Beranbaum says, by seeing how an awful lot of water a pan holds.
– Pay attention to form, too. Even if a pan’s quantity is equal, the shape may affect whether you may use all of the batters or now not. Over on Epicurious, cookbook author Alice Medrich says heavier batters (brief bread, for instance) can come 2/three of the way up the sides of a pan. Still, lighter, spongier cakes need extra room to increase lest they overflow. Stick with having the pan half of full for those types of recipes, in addition to when you’re simply now not certain about how a recipe will act in a unique pan. The extra batter can always be baked off as cupcakes, muffins, or mini-loaves.
You do not necessarily stay within the equal form of a pan, even though. I lately reduce a cake recipe by 1/2 to trade it from a Bundt cake to an unmarried loaf. Both pans are fairly tall initially, and it changed into just a depend of shrinking the amount of batter to shape the lower quantity.
– Adjust the recipe as needed. Don’t count on exchanging a pan length, and no longer should change anything else within the recipe. Depending on whether your layer of batter is shorter or taller, you could need to reduce or grow the baking time. Cupcakes and truffles might be carried out in as little as 1/2 the time as their large counterparts. When checking out an orange tea bread, I observed that a 9-inch cake finished baking 15 mins (25 percent) quicker than the 8-inch model (and even then changed into a piece dry). If you’re going from a shallower pan to a taller one, Beranbaum says you would possibly want to add a piece of greater leavener (maybe 1/4 teaspoon more baking powder, for instance) to make sure the cake can upward thrust higher.
If you’re useless to go with pans of various volumes, you will need to scale the components up or down. Recipes that call for a 9-inch square pan are effortlessly tailored for a 9-through-thirteen pan if you boom the ingredients using 50 percent. Even a 1-inch diameter disparity in a cake pan could make a difference. Your 8-inch cake baked in a 9-inch pan will flip out thinner (and doubtlessly drier), Medrich says, so do not forget scaling up the components through 25 percent to compensate.
Because your timing is all likelihood to exchange with any person of these modifications, it’s critical to apply a recipe’s other cues to decide whilst your baked precise is finished. That includes color, texture (is the cake set? Does it spring back a touch whilst pressed?), whether it has pulled far from the edges of the pan, and even temperature, in case you’re willing to be specific and use an on the spot-study thermometer for your cake or bread. In different words, use all of your senses and kitchen smarts, and you will be properly on your manner to success.
