Cake Pans

Cake pans are available in different shapes and sizes. If you are planning on buying one piece or an entire set, make sure that the cake pan you will choose is made from high quality materials. Also, see to it that all the sides of the cake pans are straight as this will ensure that your cakes won’t come out lopsided.

Aside from having and using the best cake pans that you can find, it is also recommended that you prepare them appropriately to solidify your chances of getting the perfect cake each time. This also applies to pans with non-stick interior. Preparing cake pans for baking will prevent your cakes from sticking unto the surface. This will allow swift and effortless cake release therefore avoiding any damage to your cakes. Cleanups are a breeze as well since you don’t have to scrub the pans to get off the stuck cake bottoms.

If you have no idea how to prepare your cake pans, here’s how:

You will need a clean pastry brush and about a tablespoon of softened butter or shortening for a standard 9-inch cake pan. If you ran out of butter, vegetable oil is the best alternative. Smear the butter on the cake pan with the pastry brush. Make sure that you will evenly coat the entire pan especially the corners.

Once done applying butter on the cake pan, place a heaping tablespoon of floor in the pan. Shake the flour into the pan to completely coat it. The flour should completely stick to the butter. Tap the pan lightly on its sides if you have to. Once the pan is completely coated with flour, you can discard the excess flour by dumping it out.

Now, you’re ready to use your cake pan!

Baking pans come in thousands of variations. The basic shapes are circles, rectangles, and squares, but there are plenty of other specialized shapes reflecting geometric figures, cartoon characters, children's toys, animals, and other objects in nature, to name a few. They also come in different sizes. Round pans alone have diameters that range from 4 to 36 inches. They can have a light- or dark-colored surface, and they can also vary in thickness.

It is obvious that different baking pan shapes and sizes make different kinds of cakes. What is not so obvious is if their color and thickness make any difference.

Most people know that light-colored objects reflect heat while those that have dark-colors absorb it. This also applies to baking pans. Dark pans, therefore, because they are hotter, tend to brown the batter more quickly and intensely. The result is a cake crust that is darker than one baked in a light-colored pan. These cakes have the advantage of being easier to remove from the pan than their paler cousins. This is because the latter tend to stick to the pan's interiors.

Light-colored baking pans are usually not covered with non-stick coatings, while the dark pans normally are. This further makes removing cakes from the former more difficult.

The thickness of the pans, on the other hand, does not make any difference on how the cake is baked. The only advantage of thick gauge metal baking pans is that they do not warp even in high temperatures and thus are more durable. This is why you can also use baking pans made of disposable aluminum foil and tempered glass and still have virtually the same kind of crust and texture.