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Cake Pan Converter

Created by Hanna Pamuła, PhD
Reviewed by Bogna Szyk and Jack Bowater
Last updated: Jan 18, 2024


Have you ever come across the recipe you'd love to try but found that you don't have the right cake pan size? With this cake pan converter, this will never be a problem again! Using our tool is a piece of cake 🍰: input the size and shape of a recipe's baking pan, enter the dimensions of your own pan, and you'll get the conversion rate in the blink of an eye.

What's more, in the second part of the calculator, you can choose the cake's ingredients and how much of them are needed in the original recipe, and we'll recalculate all the amounts for you.

Also, you can look at our tips on adjusting baking time for different size pans. Baking pan sizes come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but with this calculator, it's a not big deal – bake and have fun, and don't worry about conversions!

🙋 Is it a chocolate cake you wanna make? Don't feel guilty! Our chocolate calculator will explain the dark chocolate health benefits to you.

How to use the cake pan converter? ○ ⇨ ◯, ◯ ⇨ 🟥

Imagine, if you would, this situation: it's a lazy Saturday morning, you're scrolling through your social media, and a tempting picture of a chocolate cake appears on your feed. Mmmmm, that sounds like the perfect plan for your weekend. But, unfortunately, all you have is a rectangular 7 × 11 × 2 inch pan, while the recipe says something about a round 6-inch cake pan (and that's definitely not enough for your needs, isn't it?). So what can you do to overcome that issue? You can, of course, use this cake pan converter:

  1. Input the baking pan size from the recipe. For our example, you need to choose the round shape from the drop-down list and enter 6 inches as the pan diameter. If you have any information about the pan height, you can change it in Advanced mode – let's say that we know our pan is 2 inches high. In the default mode, the heights for both pans are the same, so we're actually comparing pan area, not volume.

  2. Determine the dimensions of your pan. Let's assume that you have a 7 × 11 × 2 inch pan, so choose the rectangular shape and input 7 and 11 as the pan sides. The height is the same as in the original recipe, so we don't need to change anything else.

  3. We found out that the ratio between the pans is equal to 2.72. But what does this mean? Well, this means that you need 2.72 times more ingredients than the original recipe. You can do the calculations manually by multiplying each amount by the calculated ratio, or...

round cake
  1. You can use the second part of the calculator – the list of ingredients. Enter your products' names into the fields, change the unit to the one you need, and input the amount required by the recipe. Don't worry, you can add up to 15 ingredients in our calculator – the next field will appear after you fill in the previous one. So, if our recipe for a 6-inch cake pan looks like this:

    • 3/4 cup of flour

    • 1/2 cup of cocoa powder

    • 1/4 teaspoon salt

    • 2 eggs

    • 1 cup of sugar

    • 1/3 cup of vegetable oil

  2. We'll get the recalculated list for our baking pan size:

    • 2 cups of flour

    • 1.4 cups of cocoa

    • 0.7 tsp of salt

    • 5.4 eggs

    • 2.7 cups of sugar

    • 0.9 cups of oil

If you want to change the units of your ingredients (for example, from grams to cups), make sure to use the cooking measurement converter. Don't forget that larger amounts of batter may require a longer baking time.

Great! Now that you know how to convert the pan size to your needs, you can also check out our cake serving calculator – it comes in immeasurable help if you're estimating the size of the cake you need for your party 🎂🎉.

Baking pan sizes

In the table below, we've gathered some standard baking pan sizes. The two columns show the approximate volume of the pan: remember it's the volume of the whole pan. Usually, you'll put less batter than the full volume to avoid the batter overflowing, so you may fill it only 1/2-2/3 of the full capacity, depending on the cake type.

Approx. pan dimensions (in)

Approx. volume (cups)

Approx. pan dimensions (cm)

Approx. volume (L)

Round / Springform

6 × 2 inches

4 cups

15 × 5 cm

0.9 liters

8 × 1 1/2 inches

5 cups

20 × 4 cm

1.3 liters

8 × 2 inches

7 cups

20 × 5 cm

1.6 liters

9 × 1 1/2 inches

6.5 cups

23 × 4 cm

1.7 liters

9 × 2 inches

9 cups

23 × 5 cm

2.1 liters

10 × 2 inches

11 cups

25 × 5 cm

2.5 liters

9 × 2 1/2 inches

11 cups

23 × 6 cm

2.5 liters

10 × 2 1/2 inches

13.5 cups

25 × 6 cm

2.9 liters

9 × 3 inches

13 cups

23 × 8 cm

3.3 liters

Rectangular

11 × 7 × 2 inches

10.5 cups

28 × 18 × 5 cm

2.5 liters

13 × 9 × 2 inches

16 cups

33 × 23 × 5 cm

3.8 liters

13 × 18 × 2 inches

32.5 cups

46 × 33 × 5 cm

7.6 liters

Remember that there are plenty of baking pan sizes on the market. The best method of making sure what the size of your pan is, of course, is to measure it yourself. If your pan is:

  • Round, then by measuring the diameter and height, you can calculate its volume (check out the formula for the volume of a cylinder).

  • Rectangular – determining the length, width and height is essential in finding the baking pan volume (it's the volume of a rectangular cuboid).

If you know the pan dimensions, you can do the volume calculations manually. Alternately, use the Advanced mode of this cake pan converter to find the volume of your baking pan.

How to adjust baking time for different size pans?

Well, we don't have any breakthrough rules or fancy formulas that fit everything here – it's not possible as each and every cake recipe is unique. Instead, we'll present some general tips on how to adjust baking time for different size pans:

  • Baking time does not change to the same ratio as the volume of ingredients. That may sound obvious, but let's make it crystal clear – if you double the ingredients, the time shouldn't be doubled.

  • By making a larger cake than the recipe and choosing a larger pan, you can expect longer baking times. The time may be only a bit longer if you fill the pan to the same height as the original recipe. If your converted recipe makes the cake much taller, then you might need to leave the cake in the oven for a substantially longer time.

  • Decreasing the amount of batter will reduce the baking time. As it depends on the cake type, just check if the cake is done way before the original baking time. And that's how we arrive at the final important point...

  • Use a cake tester to check if your cake is done. You can go for one of those fancy metal cake testers, but skewers and wooden toothpicks work equally well (or even better, as they hold raw batter way better than metal).

Generally speaking, use your intuition and common sense and check if your cake is done more often than if you're using the original recipe.

FAQ

How do I measure a cake pan size?

To measure your cake pan:

  1. Take a ruler or a measuring tape.

  2. Place it so you can read the distance between the two opposite inner lips of the cake pan.

    • For a round baking tin, do it at its widest point – in the middle.

    • If you have a rectangular cake pan, remember to measure the lengths of both sides.

  3. For height, measure from the surface (e.g., table) to the top edge of the cake tin.

How do I convert a cake recipe to a larger pan?

To convert your cake recipe to a different pan size:

  1. Measure your cake pan.

  2. Work out its volume.

    • If the heights are the same, you can use the surface area instead.
  3. Divide the volume of your cake tin by the recommended pan's volume to find the ratio.

  4. Multiply the original amounts of ingredients by the ratio.

What is half of a 9-inch cake pan?

A 6.35-inch pan would be half of a 9-inch round cake pan of the same height. Cake tins are compared by their volumes, which are proportional to their radii². Therefore, you can't just halve the diameter.

How to convert 7-inch cake pans to other sizes?

To convert a 7-inch round cake pan to other sizes, calculate its volume and use it as a divider to find the volume ratio between the two baking tins.

For example, to convert to a 9-inch cake pan, you'll need to multiply the amount of each ingredient by 63.6/38.5 ≈ 1.65.

Hanna Pamuła, PhD
Baking pan in recipe
Shape
Round ◯
Pan diameter
in
My baking pan
Shape
Round ◯
Pan diameter
in
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