Do you have a minimalist kitchen? Maybe you are an aspiring minimalist working towards an empty countertop? Maybe you already have too many bakewares that are taking over your cabinet space!
Is that stopping you from baking the lovely cake recipe that you found on Instagram or Youtube? Don't fret, I have been there. I am not an avid baker but I do occasionally find a cake recipe that I am really itching to try! However 9 times out of 10, I do not have the exact same bakeware.
I went on to research how I can use my existing pans to try out new recipes. I usually half the ingredients on any new recipe since I was not using the exact same bakeware but that may not always be ideal too since it is a lot of trial and error.
So I found a very good post on cake pans size and conversion.
I wanted to bake a chiffon cake however the recipe called for a tube pan. A tube pan seems big and hard to store and I was not sure if I will make it regularly so I decided to not invest in one.
Lazy me just decided to use this pan cos it looks like a tube pan so I halved the ingredients from this recipe "No-fail pandan chiffon cake" and baked on~
This is a sure way to have a problem as you can see in my picture that the cake had collapsed. Though the taste was alright, the texture was definitely not alright.
Upon more research (basically reading the full blog...) I found that you cannot use NON-STICK bakeware or even grease the sides of your bake since chiffon cake needs a surface to cling on. So I was in a pinch if I should buy a proper tube pan after all. In the end, I realise I had this old aluminum loaf pan that I no longer like to use for my bread as I am lazy to cut out baking paper to line the sides for my bread. I bake bread more often and had invested in a non-stick loaf pan for my bread.
You cannot imagine my happiness when I thought about how I can make use of this again and how it has the sides that the chiffon cake need for clinging!!
However, none of the recipes that I find, use a loaf pan for chiffon cake. The tube pan ensures the cake batter is cooked evenly and provide a lot more surface for the batter to cling on to and ensure a good rise.
Since there is no recipe to help me, I decided to use the method discussed by sallysbaking which is to measure the volume of the loaf pan first. I filled up water in cups to 2/3 full of the container (this is to give room for the rise of your batter, otherwise your batter will overflow before it is cooked and it will be a messy mess inside the oven). I found out my loaf pan's volume is about 6 cups. This is by far the easiest, some blogs talked about calculating the volume using the dimensions but my loaf pan has an inverted trapezium shape, my brain just can't calculate properly. So pouring water in is really easy for me.
With 6 cups volume, I tagged my loaf size to be roughly the same as any recipe made for 8" by 2" round pans. I checked the recommended 8" tube pan in the recipe can pour in 9 cups of batter and do my maths accordingly.
My measurements went something like this: measurement x 6/9 = measurement x 2/3
With all the math out of the way, I went on to do my chiffon loaf cake. I did cut a piece of baking paper for the bottom so that the cake can slide out since the bottom of my loaf pan is not removable.
I conclude this is a big success! Though after all these calculation, I wonder if my loaf pan can actually use the original proportion of ingredients since my chiffon cake never rise all the way to the top. -.- Arggh why did I do all these maths for???
I do recognize that the size of my eggs may be different thus the resultant lower volume of my cake. To another chance of making this cake, I shall try with the original proportion to get a bigger slice. ~~
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