Sometimes I get an overwhelming desire for a slice of cake. Before I discovered the 6-inch cake pan, my only option was to bake a full size cake. Since there are just two of us, this meant that we either ate way too much cake (there is such thing), I had to give some away, or worse case, it would go bad before we could finish it. Because of this, I would avoid baking and satisfy that cake craving with a slice from a bakery or restaurant.
When I started teaching classes, I could no longer avoid baking as each class includes a dessert course. It became apparent very quickly that I needed to scale cake recipes to accommodate two to four people. That’s when I discovered the joy of the 6-inch cake pan.
Many recipes are written to yield a 9-inch cake. In most cases, you can simply split those recipes in half and they will fit into a 6-inch pan. Here are a few tips to address the split:
If there are an odd number of eggs in the original recipe, you’ll want to go by weight. The average large egg weighs 50 grams. The egg white averages 30 grams and the yolk averages 20 grams. If a recipe calls for 3 large eggs, assume that’s 150 grams of egg. That means you need 75 grams of egg for the 6-inch cake. In this case, I would start with 1 whole egg and 1 yolk, then add white until I got to 75 grams.
How many of us can split ¾ cup in half in our head? Okay, so you pulled out the calculator and came up with 0.375 cups. Does that measuring cup even exist? This is why you’ll want to convert ingredients like sugar and flour to grams first. A cup of sugar has a mass of 200 grams, while a cup of all-purpose flour weighs in at 130 grams. Those are numbers that you can easily split in half without needing a calculator, but you will need a kitchen scale.
For ingredients like salt, baking powder, and baking soda you are often dealing with amounts that are less than a teaspoon. Most kitchen scales only display weights in whole numbers so converting to grams isn’t always helpful in this situation. This is where you’ll have to do a little work with fractions. For example ¾ teaspoon is equivalent to 6/8 teaspoons. Since half of that is ⅜ teaspoons, you simply need to use your ⅛ teaspoon three times!
You may need to adjust the baking time slightly. I’ve found that decreasing the bake time by 3-4 minutes usually does the trick, but until you know for certain, check your cake up to 10 minutes before the original bake time so that you can get an idea of how much you may need to shorten it.
Keep in mind that you may need to do some tweaking, so don’t use your newly scaled cake recipe for your next dinner party. Test it out first. When I was scaling a cake that originally called for 3 whole eggs and 3 egg whites, I experimented with a few combinations before I settled on 1 whole egg and two egg whites to give me the closest result to the original cake.
Occasionally you’ll come upon recipes that start with an 8 or 10-inch cake pan. Scaling for this is not quite as straight forward. The most accurate way to scale for this situation is to:
Make the full recipe. Weigh the batter in the original pan. Be sure to zero the scale so that the pan weight is not included.
Pour the batter into the 6-inch pan according to the recipe instructions for how full to fill the pan.
Take the weight of the batter in the 6-inch pan.
Now divide the 6-inch batter weight by the original batter weight. This will give you the conversion factor.
Now multiply your ingredients by the conversion factor.
Here’s an example using an 8-inch cake pan:
Again, this may take a little trial and error as you’ll likely need to do some rounding, but it’s well worth the effort. Not only is it the perfect sized cake for two people, but when you prepare two of them, you can make the cutest little layer cake ever!
Here a few of my favorite sources for baking inspiration:
Love this Post. I am a true geeky baker and enjoyed all the math. I will have to try this since it is just my husband and I at home.