Pick a pan

January 3, 2019 5:40 PM

I have too many baking pans, but also not enough. I don't have a 10 inch tube pan. I have a normal sized bundt pan and an 9 inch angel food cake pan. Can I substitute one of those for the tube pan? Should I bake for longer or shorter in the pan you pick?

I got a new cookbook for Christmas, American Cake. A bunch of the recipes call for a 10 inch tube pan and I don't have one of those. I really don't want to buy more pans. I have a 9 inch angel food cake pan, also sometimes known as a tube pan but the cakes look like they were baked in a pan like this. I also have a regular bundt pan.

I'm wanting to make a cold oven pound cake, so for that purpose which pan would be a better substitute? And should I add time for the angel food cake pan or reduce time for the bundt pan?

posted by shmurley to Food & Drink (4 answers total)

Best answer: Both your 9 inch angel food pan and the bundt pan should have the same capacity - 12 cups. A 10 inch tube pan would have a capacity of 16 cups. Your best bet would be to decrease the recipe by 25%, if possible, and cook it in the angel food pan at the same temperature as the recipe specifies but for less time - unfortunately there isn’t a hard or fast rule for how much to decrease baking time so you’ll have to keep an eye on it.
posted by exutima at 6:15 PM on January 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Agreed with exutima - a 10-inch tube pan normally holds 16 cups, which is one of the largest common home pans. You can convert to another pan size but you'll need to reduce the recipe (25%, as above, or more) depending on volume.

Using anything with a center will help not needing to adjust time as much, but it's definitely part of the art of baking. That said, you can experiment with non-toroid pans as well, with caveats that timing may be trickier.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:23 PM on January 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Best answer: One thing to keep in mind is that bundt-style tube pans are often non-stick, while angel food pans are very deliberately not because the cake needs purchase to climb the pan. That potentially means an adjustment in temperature & time, depending on what the recipe was written for -- darker pans need a lower temp to keep from overbrowining/burning and an adjustment to how you prep the pan, because a recipe that will slide out of a non-stick will not slide out of an angel food pan without greasing/spraying/lining/etc the pan.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:07 PM on January 3, 2019

Response by poster: Thank you so much exutima, cobaltnine, and jacquilynne. Instead of futzing with the recipe I'm going to go buy another pan. What's one more pan when you already have 25 or so anyway?!
posted by shmurley at 7:54 AM on January 4, 2019 [1 favorite]