advice on measuring cake pans please

fathertedsfavenun

can someone please help me with this?

I have (or thought I had) a 12" square tin, but my friend who recently started her own cake making business told me that you measure square tins diagonally to get how many inches it measures for your recipes, which actually makes my tin 17". I know you do a diameter measurement for a round tin but surely for a square it's length x width? I'm all confused now, because I always buy boards that are an inch wider than the cake but surely buying an inch wider of a 17" board is going to be too big? Or is it just to help work out the amounts when multiplying ingredients in a recipe? I feel like my brain is going to explode:eek: - any advice would be greatly appreciated

thanks

Golden_Anemone

My square cake tins were all bought using the measurement as the length of the sides. Eg, 23cm square is 23cm x 23cm. I'm pretty sure this is standard. I think your friend is wrong.

I Know that TV screens are measured corner to corner but have never heard of cake tins being measured this way?

There's a Home Made Cakes thread on this board where some brilliant cake makers hang out - you might want to ask the question there to be certain.

fathertedsfavenun

brilliant, thanks very much

mildred1978

Your friend is an idiot.

Owain_Moneysaver

A 12" x 12" has an area of 144"².

A 12" diameter round tin has an area of 113"²

So using a recipe for a 12" round tin in a 12" square tin will result in an underfilling of about 20%.

Here's a quick guide I made up in OpenOffice Calc which takes the diameter of a cake tin, calculates the radius (half diameter) and thus the area. The sq root of the area gives the square side. and multiplying the square side by SQRT(2) gives you the diagonal measurement of the square.

So eg. a 12" diameter round cake tin has the same area as a 10" square, and so a recipe for one should fill the other to the same depth. A 10" square has a diagonal of 15" so you'd need a 15+1+1=17" dia round cakeboard to display it on.

Owain_Moneysaver

mildred1978 wrote: »

Your friend is an idiot.

Cruel.

But her sponges will be a bit flat :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

fathertedsfavenun

thanks Owain, that sounds much more like it. I thought I was going mad when she was trying to explain it to me, because although it was many moons ago I was at school I was sure my methods of measuring were more viable than hers, and a quick Google dint' confirm much really.

and that table is brilliant, thanks for sharing