My friend wants me to make her tiered wedding cake, it's not a big cake 50 to 70 servings needed but, she has this humongous, rectangular cake topper she "has" to use, so there goes my round cake idea, a square one looks funny with the topper so I guess I'll be using 1/4 sheet and OS 1/4 sheet pans but I have no idea how many servings would I get from each cake making them 4 inch both. I have being looking in every serving and cutting chart I can find but this shape only comes in party size servings, do any of you have this information or at least an idea on how to figure this out? TIA for any help. God Bless
Does the topper have to go on the cake? Can she be convienced to leave it on the table? Is it heavy too? If so tell her it will be unstable. 
http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/baking-wedding-cake-2-inch-pans.cfm
It's a rectangle. All you have to do is a bit of simple math to determine the number of servings.
A 1x2 serving has a surface area of 2
A quarter sheet (9x12) has a surface area of 108
108 divided by 2 = 54
So a 4" tall quarter sheet will serve 54 1x2x4 servings
HTH!
rectangles/squares are easy. Just "do the math".
A 2-layer 12x18 ... the pieces would be cut in 1x2x4" pieces. This means the cake would be cut in 12 rows by 9 columns = 108 servings.
For odd size pans (i.e. 11x15) I round down to the even dimensions just for easy division. So 1x2x4" pieces on a 11x15 I would figure on a 10x14 area, and the cake would be cut in 10 rows by 7 columns = 70 servings. (the 15" side, when divided by 2" would actually be cut into 5.5 rows .... I don't know how to cut a "half" row!) 
Also check the actual sizes of your pans. If your pans have a flare to it, the open part (top) may be 9x13, but the base may be just 8x12. When I measured my older pans once, I was VERY surprised!
Oh thank goodness Indy came along and suggested do the math. Isn't that cool?
I love how math saves the day. I'm a math geek and all. Go FSC!! (my math team in school)
Wait...isn't a "party serving" size just twice the size of a Wilton or "wedding serving" size? If you have the amount of "party servings," wouldn't you just have to multiply that number by 2 to get the Wilton/"wedding serving" amount?
No, party servings are generally 1.5 times the amount of Wilton's wedding serving, so either 2x1.5in or 1x3in.
I suggest to the mods that prterrell should do a sticky with this explanation, it's easy to visualize the way she describes it.
I suggest to the mods that prterrell should do a sticky with this explanation, it's easy to visualize the way she describes it.
sometimes that system doesnt' work for me, especially with odd size pans
An 11x15 has surface area of 165 (11 times 15), divided by 2 (1 x 2 as in the example above) = 82.5
A 2-layer 11x15 serves 70 under my math (10 rows by 7 columns). I dont' know how to cut a cake this size to get 82 pieces (82 divided by 10 rows = 8.25 columns; or 82 divided by 11 rows = 7.5 columns ..... how do you cut 1/4 column or 1/2 column?) and I don't know how to tell a customers they'd get a "half" piece in the serving qty.
Educate me 
... I"m sure I'm missing something simple because using the surface area sounds like a good and simple idea. 
Okay, well I've never done an 11x15, so it's not a pan I've ever contemplated. The largest I ever do from home is the 12x18 and when I was at Publix we did 24x18, 18x18, 12x18, and 9x12, but no 11x15. I'm not really sure why that pan was ever even created as it's such a strange size to me as it's odd dimensions make it pretty much impossible to cut evenly and there will always be left over cake that the customer is receiving but not paying for in a per serving pricing structure, so it's not really logical to me to even offer this size.
However, it IS possible to cut an 11x15 so that you only have 1 square inch of left over cake (the .5 serving in the calculation, which you have to round down, when you do the math to a whole number), giving 82 servings.
Attached is a quick sketch I did in MS Paint showing how to cut an 11x15 into 82 servings. It is a bit rough, so the grid (which is marked to show 11 inches by 15 inches) is not perfectly poroportional, but it should give you an idea. Each color block shows a 1x2 slice of cake. The white square is the left over 1" square of cake or 1/2 serving of cake.
I suggest to the mods that prterrell should do a sticky with this explanation, it's easy to visualize the way she describes it.
sometimes that system doesnt' work for me, especially with odd size pans
An 11x15 has surface area of 165 (11 times 15), divided by 2 (1 x 2 as in the example above) = 82.5
A 2-layer 11x15 serves 70 under my math (10 rows by 7 columns). I dont' know how to cut a cake this size to get 82 pieces (82 divided by 10 rows = 8.25 columns; or 82 divided by 11 rows = 7.5 columns ..... how do you cut 1/4 column or 1/2 column?) and I don't know how to tell a customers they'd get a "half" piece in the serving qty.
Educate me
... I"m sure I'm missing something simple because using the surface area sounds like a good and simple idea.
You'd have to round down for odd sizes, but only on one side, if you did it like you described. You're rounding down both sides, but you don't need to. For 11x15 you'd get 11 (one-inch side of the serving)x7 (two-inch side of the serving, rounded down for 15 being uneven) =77, but there'd be some servings that would be bigger on the edges.
Doing it with the surface area is just faster, because unless you take out a ruler I don't know that you'd ever get a perfect 1" piece. From what I've expereinced, people at weddings cut the pieces smaller rather than larger, so they usually get more out of the cake than I estimate anyway. I don't even charge by the serving anymore because it makes no sense to me to do that, and the surface area would just be a good way to estimate it quickly.
Okay, prterrell just beat me to it. The visual is much more helpful than my description!
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