ARGH! I just made this recipe and it told me that it's enough for two 9" rounds and when I checked the Wilton chart, it said that a 1 layer 9" round needs 5 1/3 cups of batter. That recipe I made barely had enough for 5 cups. I divided them into two pans and i got an inch of cake (cooked!) each.

How do you know how much batter a recipe makes? Apparently, I can't rely on what it says there anymore

anyone?

dont' know how to tell in advance, but just wanted to share that I had one of those. The recipe said it would make THREE 7" round cakes (do they make 7" round pans? ), so I thought I'd be nice and safe with two 8" pans with batter left over. Barely enough to make the 8" pans. I couldnt' figure how in the world they expected to get THREE cakes out of this batch.

Maybe they just make littler cakes than I do!

it's just frustrating cause i had everything planned out and now i have to make another batch. thank god i didn't wait until it was too late. it just means that i have to spend more money for the ingredients than i thought

I've had the same problem now I just always buy an extra 1 or 2 boxes of mix depending on how large the cake order is. If I get lucky and have an extra box left over that's fine to since I'm always making or playing around with cake. Much rather have an extra box than have to run out for more.

i guess it's a lesson i learned. never trust the batter amount in the recipe and just try it out myself.

am glad i started baking tonight. at least i have time left to buy more ingredients and stuff.

this isn't the first time it has happened, btw.

i concur with the above. make the recipe and measure it! i write down the number of cups right on my recipe so that i know for next time.

that's a wonderful idea1 thanks! i never even thought about that LOL

yeah, i always test the recipe and write down the cups of batter it makes. this helps when i want to make the recipe in a different size pan and it also tells me how many cupcakes i get out of it.

Most of the time when a recipe or box says how many certain size pans it fills they are talking about 1" or 1 1/2" deep pans like one would buy in the supermarket - not the 2" deep ones we use. A better judge of how much you need for a certain pan is to fill the pan 2/3rds full of batter.
To have an idea of how much that is fill the pan to that mark w/water & measure it.

thanks for the wonderful ideas everyone. i will keep them in mind