As some of you may know I'm going to be opening a storefront in the fall. I need new pans. Mine are sad, old springform pans, some bottoms missing. It's not good.

So obviously I need at least 4" tall. Thinking I'd like 2 layers of icing in the middle instead of 1, I've noticed when the cake is cut it looks so much prettier. Also fine with 3 layers of icing.

So question is do I buy 2" pans or 3"? The biggest concern is wastage I don't want to level my cakes too much.

What do you all think? How deep should I get my pans? And how should I tort them for the least waste?

Thanks all!!

Bumpity bump :-)

Personally, I use (and like) 2" pans.  If the layers bake nice and flat, no need to level.  If I used 3" pans, I would want to torte those. I also like the shorter bake times with the 2" pans.

So do you use 2 pans for each cake?

I actually use three pans, if I am doing an 8" cake.  I have my recipes calculated out to make enough to fill three as each cake is three layers.  My tiers come out to about 5.5-6" in height.

I use 2" pans as well magic line is my preferred brand and yes I bake two cakes and we do very little leveling  hope that helps :)

First, congrats ElizabethsCakeCreations !  I opened my storefront in October 2015, my lifelong dream !!  Secondly,  I personally prefer using 2" pans.  I use 2 pans for each cake.  On rare occasions I will use 3.  I purchased a lot of my pans on EBay.  You can also buy sets at Michael's using their 50% off coupon.  Good luck !!

You don't need springform pans, as you can get regular type cake pans with removable bottoms that do the same thing, in different sizes.  So you can use this for cheesecakes, mud cakes, regular cakes, brownies, & tarts.

whatever you choose to buy, do not mix & match pans in the exact same size & depth.  I found this out the hard way when I was baking up 3 pans at a time and the 3 cakes were baking completely differently.  The rise was different, the darkness of the crust was different, the baking time was different.  I was even shifting them around in the oven.  finally I got serious and took a good close look at the pans.

I had 2 that were exactly the same, and one pan that was a different brand.  The metal was different, the thickness of the metal was different, the actual inside measurement was different, the height was different.  I trashed the odd one out and spent the money on a matching 3rd pan.  Learned that lesson the hard way.

Magic Line ......by the way.

Magic Line are a cut above and like all things a cut above are pricey. Fat Daddio pans are good too and don't hit the wallet as hard.

Thank you ladies I'll check them out :-)

I thought maybe I was mistaken or the previous cake store I purchased a few pans from was marked incorrectly but I thought magic line pans were fairly compariable in price to Wilton. So I looked on Amazon and they are a few dollars different from each other. We bought a Wilton pan by accident at previous cake store before we knew what we were doing lol and magic line quality is much better in my opinion. I think the magic line pans will hold up much longer as well. 

I'll have to check again! Last time I looked a few years ago the pans started at $25/pan.

Global Sugar Art has the magic line pans for reasonable for all those stateside ladies (I'm in Canada). A round 8" X 2" is $6.29

I think fat dadios are going to be easier to find in Canada

I love Magic Line pans.  Also 2" pans.  I gave away my 3" deep pans.  I just don't think they bake well.