So I'm sitting here working on designs for new cakes while watching Amazing Wedding Cakes... I noticed that some of the girls just bake is full sheets then use these huge cutters to stamp out the shape that they need, like 6" rounds, 8" rounds, etc. That seems smarter to me. no torting the layers and baking a hundred different sized pans all the time.
Anyone do this or know where you can get the cutters?????

There are several suppliers that carry them... they're called cake rings.

I personally would never buy/use them. Who honestly WANTS to ice cakes with raw edges and mess with crumbs? I personally don't know any bakery that cuts off the browned edges of their cakes on purpose (except one I've seen on TV)... crazy!

not to mention all the WASTE involved with that, I mean........yeah you could make cake balls.....but seriously there would be so much waste! Not to mention the headache it wold pose when someone wanted to alternate flavors in the tiers!

I don't know...sounds pretty interesting to me. And depending upon the size, it seems you could get several cake layers out of one sheet cake. And if you freeze them, crumbs are no problem when frosting. Can't see much more waste than in leveling if you cut the rounds close enough. Hmmmm. Might be worth a try sometime!

I tried this with a self=made cutter when I was doing an event for a GS troop. I got 12 4" cakes out of 2 sheets. Great!....until the girls tried to crumbcoat the cut edges! They tore up big time! Maybe if I had softened the BC a lot more! There was no way to keep them frozen.

I decided that I would just get another 4" pan and bake more if I do this again. Esp for beginners.

carmijok-yeah, thats what i was thinking. I hate leveling and all the fuss with stupid bake even strips and flower nails. plus its less crap to pile on my bakery shelf with 30 different pans. one sheet and you can make it whater you want. I think I might buy a couple and just try it.

Would you still have to level the sheet cake? My sheet cakes don't come out flat any more than my round ones do...but maybe it's a me thing

Yes, of course you'd still have to level the sheet cakes.

We did this once in culinary school

night.mare.

First of all, unless you can get a true commercial full sheet size pan in your oven, you aren't saving much oven space over baking a couple of half sheet 12X18s or 12s or 14s or whatever.

You can cut out a 14", 10", and 6" from a true full sheet.
Or 5x3 rows of 4" cakes for a total of 15 minis per full sheet.
(that's 30 minis out of two true full sheets.)

If you've ever loaded individual wedding cake tiers onto a pan rack, you'd discover for storage reasons they fit best this way, rather than trying to keep each pan sorted by all the same size. (easier to reach, and handle less from both ends of the rack rather than filling each tray up with lots of 6" tiers.)

Either way you look at it, it is a lot of waste. To find out how many other combination sizes you can cut, just rearrange your round tins inside your full sheet pans! You can't get six 8" from a full, but if you alternate them with 6" size, you can get three of each. (that's better, in my opinion than cutting four 8" and throwing out the waste.)

This is similar to comercial bakery pan setups where six 6" are welded together, as well as 7", and 8".

personally in my own home oven (which I use for my business) I can fit a 12" and 10", and 4" pan on the bottom rack and 2-6", 2-8",1-9" pan on the top rack (did that this past weekend) and it took about an hr. for all the cakes to bake up. If I did the same with sheet pans, I could get two half sheets (12"x18") in there, one on each rack and it would take about 50 min. to bake.

There is NO way I could cut a 12"+10"+4"+6"+6"+8"+8"+9" cake from those 2 sheet pans!

Unless you've got a TON of sheet pans and no other pans, seems to me it would be a LOT quicker to just bake them in their proper size/shape.


Although, I'm not against using larger square cakes and cutting them for small squarea cakes, I've done this on many occasions, when I had to make 4" square cakes for my son's schoolmates...I just baked a 16" square and cut it into 16 mini cakes


As for leveling the cakes, I don't level ANY of my cakes.......I've figured out my batter, my oven, etc. to the point that they all bake up perfectly level, even my sheetcakes...I never cut a cake unless I'm torting it!

I've noticed that Buddy (Cake Boss) and his crew frequently use the commercial 1" sheet pans to create their cakes. You can plainly see they are not leveled before hand and are pretty even. I guess they have also worked out the proper amounts and temps to acheive level cakes. The one inch sheets make it a snap to ice without torting. I've been thinking of giving it a try myself. I recently took a class from Janette Pfertner who mentioned that she trims the sides off all her cakes and she does lovely work. I'll ask her how she deals with the crumbs and let everyone know if I am successful in my attempt.

I will have a commercial shop and double deck oven that fits full sheets, so that is why I'm thinking about it. I can't operate those stupid cake levelers to save my life. Seems simple, just slide it through, right? I always get the torts uneven and I hate that. I'm going to have a ton of sheet pans anyway, so i might just try this since i'll have the stuff. I'll let you know what I think. When time is money, I think that no torting would be a bonus, and I can freeze a sheet and if someone orders something for that day, I can just cut whatever size I need. Now I have some 6"in the freezer, but someone called for a 10", now I'm suck baking again....and I hate baking (its only the decorating the drives me)!!

I thought her method looked intriguing also. Such nice straight, perfect sides! I donât know if I would try it - but it looked really interesting!

She also layers her cakes and fills them inside those rings. She slides the ring off when its filled and its perfectly straight.

hi all, this is interesting to me as i have a christening cake to do this month and have been watching cake boss here in the uk and noticed that all their cakes are really thin and they just stack them up which gives great height and looks so much eaiser

i am another baker who no matter what i try my cakes never bake even and i lose so much height trying to level them i am considering using three victoria sponge cake tins and stacking them but i'm not to sure how much batter i should use in them its a risk i will take and hope i don't i need to try too many times to get it right or i'll have to resort to the usual tins and bake two of each size to get the height i'd like

if anyone tries this method please,please post back here and let us know how it goes

thanks

I never have a problem leveling my cakes now, since I saw a new method on You Tube. Simply take out of oven, lay clean hand towel on top of cake and gently press the "hump" down. While hot turn out onto plastic wrap. Wrap it up. Pop in freezer. No more cake scraps and it saves tons of time. Cakes come out moist & level every time.

I do that Joy, and still have 'waves' in mine, they bake up higher on the sides, then hump in the middle. OR one side bakes up higher than the rest. and my oven IS level. My husband kept askingme why my cakes were crooked. and I told him "the dadgum stove is uneven" and about a week later we were working on something and he laid the level on the stove to set it down. Then he looked and in the loving way he has said "it aint the stove thats a bubble off"....

I am doing a wedding cake for Friday, 6", 10", and 14". I leveled the 10" with the knife along the edges of the pan, the other two I leveled by pressing down with dishtowel and then put cookie sheets on top of them while still in the pan for a few minutes. I like the dishtowel method myself as it seems cleaner and easier.

I did this for a while. I purchased sheet pan extenders to be able to get a taller layer. I too thought it would be much easier to do in the long run. It does make the baking process easy...but everything else is like Leah said a night. mare. I don't freeze so icing the raw edges sucked. I am now back to using pans and my Agbay. I seriously believe the Agbay saves me the most time.

I did this for a while. I purchased sheet pan extenders to be able to get a taller layer. I too thought it would be much easier to do in the long run. It does make the baking process easy...but everything else is like Leah said a night. mare. I don't freeze so icing the raw edges sucked. I am now back to using pans and my Agbay. I seriously believe the Agbay saves me the most time.

I'll sing the praises of the AgBay as well. I LOOOVE my AgBay. Ya know those Butterfinger commercials? Yah, no one better lay a finger on my AgBay! Oooh, but be careful! That sucker is as sharp as people warn! Um no, not cut fingers here...

Another reason this 'cutting out' idea appeals to me, I find that when my layers cool, they tend to have 'not straight' sides. I don't know how else to say that in a way that makes sense. Like, for example, the 8" pan... I'll end up with a layer that is about 8" at the bottom, but maybe 7.75" at the top, so when you fill and stack the layers, you have a little bit of an hour glass shape. (I put the bottom layer bottom down, the top layer top down on it) Have others dealt with this issue and solved it without trimming? Or is that kind of my only option? I've noticed that the Wilton pans are the worst for this, and it's not as pronounced with my good Fat Daddios pans, but it still happens a bit. Any ideas?

I get it too,generally I just plop on enough icing to hide it! lol

Sounds like maybe your oven isn't heating evenly! OR your oven might not be level on the floor.....ever sat a level on your rack in there??

Melvira, I get that too but it seems to be only on round cakes. I don't know. I think that's why I like doing minis where I cut them out with a cookie cutter. They have such perfectly straight edges.

KHalstead, I think its just the 12 inch pan. I baked two each 6, 8, 10, and 12 inch cakes today and only the two 12s were slanted. There is a dent in the bottom side of the pan so maybe that caused it. I had to level quite a bit off of the cake though. This is what my cakes look like when they come out of the oven. They are not exactly pretty on top!