Hi everyone, I'm making my first big 5 tier wedding cake in September and I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how much batter to use (rather how much of each ingredient to plan on buying) It's going to be a 4''-6''-8''-10''-12'' plus a 12x18 sheet cake.

I wasn't planning on buying those sized cake pans because they are expensive and I thought I could get away with doing all "sheet cakes" (really a 12x18 jelly roll pan) and cutting out the right sizes and stacking them 3 high (also eliminates having to torte them) but it amounts to 11 total 12x18 cakes. I know I'll end up losing cake to scraps but I figured the price of those scraps would be less than the price of 5 cake pans...

First of all I guess I was wondering if you think its a bad idea to do it this way as opposed to buying the cake pans. Does 11 12x18 cakes seem like too much or too little? Also how would you figure out how much batter? Do you think one batch of cake to make one 12x18 cake meaning I should get enough ingredients for 11 times the recipe?

I hope someone can help me!

(p.s. I attached a picture of how I thought I would cut them from the 12x18 cakes, they wanted to alternate cake flavors between tiers which also makes it difficult because I can't cut say, the 4'' and 6'' out of the same sheet...)

A 12x18x2 cake pan requires 14 cups of batter per layer.

A 12x18x4 layer cake yields 72 party size servings (1-1/2x2x4).

A 12x18x4 layer cake yields 108 wedding size servings (1x2x4).

Doug does wedding sheet cake math:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-594065-.html

The WASC cake recipe by Rebecca Sutterby made using 2 DH white cake mixes yields a tad over 14 cups of batter:

http://tinyurl.com/2cu8s4

HTH

P.S. Personally, I would use either Michaels or Hobby Lobby 40% off coupons to buy one or two of the Wilton 2" round cake pan sets (6-8-10-12"). It will make your baking so much easier. And it's not like you'll never use them again. The rounds are a very popular shape.

Also, the 6-8-10-12 would yield (12/24/38/56) 130 wedding servings...