I have a scratch recipe and I need to bake two 10" cakes. Is this possible in a regular oven? I've never baked two 10" cakes at once before. I'm not sure that they can even fit on the same rack.

One of the pans is a Magic Line pan, the other is a Michael's brand pan that I bought with a coupon. Is there anything special I need to know about baking with two different pan brands?

Thanks in advance!

AC

I don't see why not, unless you have a really small oven. You could always put the empty pans in a cold oven just to test the size if you're still not sure though. I bake 2-6" and 2-10" all at once pretty often. (A 6" & a 10" on each of two oven racks, staggered so the air can circulate.) If just 2-10", I would probably put them on different racks but staggered.

I might have even baked 4-10" at once. But that would have been back in May and my memory doesn't quite go back that far...

I can't speak for the different pan brands, although I'd be inclined to watch them carefully to make sure one didn't bake faster than the other. (I would suspect the Michael's brand might bake faster - but this is based on, well, nothing!)

But I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, make-it-up-as-I-go kind of girl; there's no science behind these decisions other than my cakes usually come out fine. Usually.

I recently baked with 2 each 8" Wilton round pans, and 2 each 6" and 2 each 4" Magic Line Pans, in the same oven at the same time at 325 degrees. The Magic Line pans took far longer to bake than the Wilton pans even though they were considerably smaller.

All the cakes turned out fine. I am a hobby baker only, but so far I've had very good success with the Wilton pans I've purchased with a coupon. I only ordered the Magic Line Pans to get the smaller sizes. All my pans except the smaller rounds and my square pans from Fat Daddio's are Wilton or Michael's Celebrate It brand pans.

As far as putting more than one pan in an oven, I've read and heard advice from experienced bakers/teachers range from "put only 1 pan in the center of the center rack" to "put as many as will fit!"

Sure. I load up my ovens.

I put numerous pans in my regular (non-convection) oven. I also use different brands of pans. About half way through baking, I switch the top rack and bottom rack pans. About the time I know the cakes should be done, I check every 5-7 minutes to see if each pan is done.

I'm pretty sure I have a standard size oven. I have two racks so I can position them in the middle. I'm just concerned about air flow and one baking more quickly than the other. I wouldn't care if it were a box mix, but this is a scratch recipe and the ingredients have been exceptionally expensive.

Do you think I should reduce the temp to 325 and bake longer? The recipe calls for 350 and I've never made this recipe before.

Thanks for all your replies.

AC

I have two ovens - 1 regular, 1 convection. To be honest, I can load up the convection on multiple racks. In the regular oven I can only load up the one rack. But I load as many pans as I can at a time. Time is money!

I know what you mean. This cake happens to be for my own wedding, so I'm worried about the cakes baking evenly. The ingredients for this recipe have been $$$. In my case, time and money is money!

Do you think it would be ok to leave one pan out of the oven while the other bakes? It would be for about an hour or so. I've never left batter out at room temperature for that long. It's got both baking soda and powder in it, so I'm not sure how that would work.

My cakes are from scratch and I have no problem baking them all at once. If you have any extra batter it should be refrigerated until ready to bake. I personally prefer to make batter only for what I can fit into my oven.

Your wedding cake--how cool! I've read that you should refrigerate your batter while waiting to stick it in the oven.