Is There A Thread To Figure Out Geometry Of A Cake?
Decorating By HowCoolGomo1 Updated 1 Dec 2009 , 3:27pm by erinalicia
I was a teacher at a private school last year and I kept telling them, don't listen when people say you'll never use your math....YOU WIll!!
And the Economics class where you learn Supply and Demand. I've quoted "the laws of Supply and Demand" on here so many times that I've lost track. Wow, who knew I actually LEARNED something in that class AND that it would apply to something I do every single day!
Hubby is a woodworker and he had no idea he was doing geometry every time he worked on a piece, until he saw our daughter's geometry book.
Okay ... if I'm understanding the question correctly, then you're asking how to calculate the density (or weight) of your cake based on its circumference or on its diameter, right? (If I'm not understanding it correctly ... well then, just ignore me
). It's a little long-winded, so here goes - but don't say I didn't warn you!Remember that your density (d) = mass (m)/volume (v)
and your v = length (l) * width (w) * height (h) (for a square or rectangle ... look below for a typical round cake).
1.- For a round cake, figure out your radius (this is without counting the extra inch for icing that leah_s spoke of, as an inch of icing will not weigh what an inch of cake does); so for a 6 inch cake, the radius truly is 3 inches.
2.- Measure the height of your bare cake.
3.- Multiply your height by Pi.
4.- Square the radius. (Multiply the radius by itself.)
5.- Multiply the product from Step 3 by the product of Step 4. This will give you your unit of volume, and it will be a cubic unit (whether you calculated it in inches or centimeters, it will be cubic).
6.- Now, as we don't have a standard cake density and all recipes are different, here's where you have to do a little personalized math. Cut a piece of your typical base recipe for cake (be it a scratch, WASC, or whatever cake) that is the size of one cubic unit (i.e. cut one inch by one inch by one inch of cake for cubic inches, ditto for centimeters) and weigh that on your kitchen scale. THAT is your cake's Density. Once you've weighed once, you can use the same weight every time you bake, supposing you use a similar recipe, and you don't need to reqeigh with each session.
7.- Multiply your Volume result from Step 5 by your Density however much one cubic inch of your recipe weighs, and that will give you the Mass (close enough to weight for all intents and purposes) of your cake in your chosen weight units. This will give you your un-iced cake's weight. Obviously much easier to do if you have a square cake.
LOL! Hope people don't throw cake pans at my head for that!
Not to add to the confusion but if you're trying to figure out the weight of your cake then wouldn't it be simpler to simply weigh the uniced cake? That's the weight. *Scratches head*
Density is mass/volume so to find the density, you could just divide the weight of the cake by the volume of the cake which you calculated in steps 1-5.
Mass and weight aren't the same. Mass is how much matter an object contains whilst weight is just how much force of gravity is being exerted on an object. Weight will vary according to location (you will weigh less at high altitudes than at sea level) but Mass will be the same regardless of location. The only way to measure the mass of your cake is to use a balance (a set of scales where you place objects of known mass on one arm and balance it against the item whose mass you are measuring.) Since most homes don't happen to have a set of balance scales handy, for practical purposes, we can use weight, measured on mechanical or digital spring-loaded weighing scales for figuring out density.
So going back to the question of figuring out density, simply weigh your cake and divide it by volume.
Now why a caker needs to know their cakes precise density is my big question!
I think they were using the density to measure the weight, not the other way around. The term 'density' was only used to explain that different cakes will weigh different amounts, even if they're the same size. I would think they'd be using this formula to find the volume of the cake before making it so they could see how much a tiered cake would weigh once put together. I would use it to see if I could carry the assembled cake before making it.
i'm thoroughly confused, and I'm not understanding why anyone would want to go to so much work to figure out how much a cake weighs. Me and my digital scales are just happy together, and I think the only time I actually weighed the cake was when I was shipping it, which I won't do again.
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