Hi,
My name is Paula and this is my first time at the site. I must say you all have the most beautiful cakes I have ever seen. I am truly an amature at cake decorating. I took the Wilton I class for fun a couple of years ago but I have not done any nice cakes like the ones on this site. I was wondering what kind of pans everyone uses for their cakes. I only have the standard 9" round pans. Thanks everyone.
Welcome to the most addicting website you can find.
Professional baking pans generally are sturdy, stainless steel, with sharp corners and straight vertical sides. The home style pans often have slanted sides, making icing the sides of your cake a bit more tricky.
Magic line is a good brand that can be found in decorating shops and here in the store. They are sometimes sold in sets of graduated sizes.
When I buy new pans, I generally buy two- most cakes are two layers- and they can both bake at the same time.
Character pans or trademarked pans can be fun, but expensive. You can only use them for your use, you cannot sell a cake made from one of these pans.
Hi welcome,
Conversations on CC will keep you in a good mood. But be careful you can end up like me and not get anything else done! JK I just started and have been practicing and taking odd classes here and there. So much fun. It is my art. The CC community it the BEST!
WELCOME TO THE ADDICTION 
I use the wilton pans and charcter pans for friends. I want toget the magic line pans when budget will allow. This site is great for information and support and lots of giggles sometimes. The gallery is wonderful help for ideas. Or when you have something in your head and are trying to picture it. Someone has done something like it.
Oh and say goodbye to your clean house, dishes and laundry. Because now you have an excuse not to do them 
what does the mm stand for in mmf?
There is a great place on this site that tells you what all the short cuts are. I have them saved on my computer. 
dolphins256
Welcome to our addiction! The pans I use the most are round magic lined and are 2 inchs tall and are 9,8,7,6 and 3 inch round and the Sports ball. Doubles on all sizes. I have bought a few character pans and wondered why....I can rent them for a buck at my cake decorating store so have not bought them since.
My best purchase was a KA and then my airbrush.
My most useful tool is a bench knife then my rolling pin. I use the bench knife to pick up fondant.
I love Ameri color.
I love Satin Ice and Pettinice for fondant - it is so easy and tastes so much better than other brands.
I use Wiltons BC recipe because it is easy to smooth.
Finally I love the Viva paper towel method.
If you have questions just ask and we all love sharing our knowledge. Good luck and have fun!
{BTW gang - looks like we have problems using brand names so that is why I split the Ameri Color....}
I use Wilton pans and they work great. Hobby Lobby usually has printable coupons on their website for 40% one product, so I have used those to buy pans. If you don't have that store near you, Michaels usually has a 40% coupon in their ad in the newspaper. That is a great way to stock up on supplies without completely breaking the bank.
Welcome Dolphins -
This is a great site !!! I just joined in July and I think I've posted several hundred messages already. ACCKKK !! Does that tell you how much time I spend on here ???
I have learned so, so much on CC. I spent alot of time when I first joined looking at the galleries, recipes, and forums. Here's a few of my favorite things that I've learned:
Using parchment paper to line the bottom of your pans. Spray the pan with Bake Easy or use Wilton's Cake Release in the pan, then line the bottom with parchment paper. Your cake will NEVER stick if you do this.
Buy a 4" foam paint roller to smooth your icing (when using crusting icing). Let the iced cake sit for a little while to let the icing "crust" then gently smooth the paint roller over the top and sides. Works great!
Use valuable coupons to stock up on supplies, especially your cake pans! Don't know if you have Hobby Lobby, Michaels or Joann Fabric near you but every other week, Hobby Lobby has an internet coupon for 40% off one regularly priced item. I got all of my sets of cake pans this way (saved $17 on each set). Got round, square, oval and heart pans. Every so often, Michaels puts out a 50% off coupon for ALL Wilton supplies. Not limited to one item. A few months ago I spent about $200 and got $400 worth of stuff (gel colorings, piping bags, couplers, tips, meringue powder, gumpaste mix, pre-made fondants, fondant roller and cutouts). So much to buy if you really want to do nice cakes. Also, in alot of cities, these stores will honor each other's coupons....so you can go to, say, Hobby Lobby and Michaels every day in the week they have the 40% off coupon, armed with a photocopy of the HL coupon for the week. I've saved tons of money this way.
Best of luck to you as you start this fun "hobby". Everyone here is so helpful so don't hesitate to ask questions!!
Suzanne
Thanks for all the tips and advice. I actually found this site looking for a cake for me and my twin sisters 30th birthday. I wanted something unique and I have found lots of ideas. I think I'm going to try to make my daughters first birthday cake coming up in a couple of weeks. I will let you know how it turns out.
Welcome dolphins256,
I love your avatar!! Dopey is sooo cute!! This is a great place to get inspiration and to learn new things.
http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-41755-.html
You will become quickly addicted, just like the rest of us!!
Welcome to Cake Central!!!!!
Hi There!! Welcome to CC..You are going to love it here and in no time at all.....You'll be baking and decorating up a storm!!!
welcome!!! you'll love it here, everyone is so nice and very helpful!!! it is soooooo addicting, i usually walk around in a zombie state cause i am up half the night on this site!!! have fun...i usually load up on pans with the michael's coupons...they are great...i live in alberta so we have a j.wilton store...it's huge and i buy alot of stuff there!!!good luck on your cake decorating journey..
Welcome Dolphin. Like everyone else has said this site is very addictive but so much fun! As a beginner myself, there is tons of information that I have picked up from either asking or just cruising the forums. One of the best "accidents" I came across!
dolphins256, I just wanted to ask about your 9" pans and mention something that I learned when I started poking around on this site!
Do you have the Wilton 9" pans that stack inside one another that came in a set together? If not, ignore what I'm about to write.
If those are the pans you have right now, and you are planning on really getting into decorating, then I HIGHLY HIGHLY suggest investing in some different pans and here's why:
Those pans have slightly sloping sides, it's what allows them to stack so nicely. But those sloping edges are tougher to get smooth icing on because when you put the two cakes together, you'll end up with cake "sticking out" farther in the center of the cake, and being narrower at the top and bottom.
I had that set of pans and struggled with smoothing icing for years until I read a thread here about them. I just bought 2 Magic Line pans with straight sides and it makes a HUGE difference in the time and effort it takes to get smooth icing on the side of the cakes! Wilton also makes pans with straight sides, you have to buy each one seperately though.
Good luck and welcome to your new addiction! LOL 
Thanks for the advice. I guess I will invest in some of those pans. Thanks everyone.
This site is extremely addicting! I have learned so much from these ladies! They are the most informative, supportive group I have ever been a part of! You will love it here!
As far as buying equipment goes, I have been very lucky to find lots of stuff on garage sales. That is a great place to find barely used pans many times for a dollar or less. I have been to sales where they had tables and tables of pans marked 25 and 50 cents each!! Talk about cake decorator's heaven! 
I have found a number of older ladies who decorated for fun and were selling their supplies on garage sales, so I could pick up entire collections of pans, tools, and books for very little cost. Even my family is on the look out for cake stuff at yard sales. Recently my sister-in-law found a sale with about two dozen seperater plates, 5 shoeboxes of various sized pillars, 3 sets of staircases, a 4-way arm and a floating tier set and paid $5 for the whole works! So what if I never use some of it? If I use a staircase once, it will pay for the whole thing! I really have very little invested in my supplies, otherwise this gets to be very expensive--especially if it's only a hobby. If the thought of using second hand stuff makes you squeamish, you can be the judge of how things look or how the people strike you as to whether they are clean or not. If you have a gut feeling that the house smells like pet doo-doo, evidence of the last cake is still in the pan, etc, then it's probably best left at their house! 
You can always use the excuse that you already have that particular pan, tool, etc, and thanks anyway. And no matter how clean they seem, I take things home and soak in a warm water and bleach solution for a while, then dump it in the dishwasher to get it all sanitized. Even when I buy them new at the store they go in the dishwasher first. You never know where those shipping crates have been. 
Most of my pans and supplies are Wilton, but a few of my pans are Magic Line. I don't have many multiples of my pans, but it is really nice to be able to use the doubles when I can. I would highly recommend buying pans in doubles--especially if you are going to be doing a lot of stacking.
One thing that I love is the Wilton Cake Release liquid and the Bake Easy spray--although the cake release works better yet than the spray in my opinion.
From all my yard sales, I have collected decorating tips in multiples. I thought it was kind of a nuisance at first, but that has actually been a life saver. The discovery of couplers was wonderful too, but it is nice not having to clean and change tips each time I switch colors. I think I have 6 #18 tips, and they all get dirty each time I do a cake!
Hope you can use some of these tips, and welcome to the site!
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