When i see a recipe for an 8" tin, the cake looks huge and thick, i have made an 8" mix and its a small shallow tin? Am i using the wrong tin? Its only about 2-3" deep?

Also when they say an 82 mix, is this for 1 tin or 2?

Thanks xx

I'm not sure what an 82 mix is but when I bake an 8" round I bake I use 2" pans. I bake 1 for each pan so each cake is 2" tall plus the filling and frosting so they are usually almost 5" tall when finished.

I don't know if this helps you, but I hope it does!

it would be two or three 8" layers slathered together with icing

82 mix? i dunno

Sorry my mispelling,i meant 2   8" mix, recipes for 8" is it for 2 of the 8" tins?

Yes my round tins are 8" but they are only 22 deep. so are they the right tins? sorry rather new to this and i am finding the recipe for the right tin a nightmare. Do i go and look up a recipe for 8" and make that recipe 2 times, for 2 tins then once its filled with buttercream as i dont know what ganache is, it should make it taller?

xxx

A standard (box) mix is supposed to make 2-8" round pans.   Most of us use 2" pans in our daily baking.   Personally, I do not think that is enough batter, because is does not make 2 nice, 2" layers.    That is why I used the WASC recipe which for one "batch" will be  extra flour, egg, sugar and milk (I use milk) which fills up the pans more.   Hopefully that doesn't sound too confusing.  

Some lessons for people who have absolutely no previous baking experience at all:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipe/measuring.html

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipe/tools.html

http://www.wilton.com/cakes/making-cakes/

http://www.wilton.com/cakes/decorating-cakes/

And once you have read ALL the pages linked from those index pages, you should be able to head into the kitchen without confusion.

Want to know what something is? please type www.google.com into your browser and then enter the word that you want to know about.

wasc is white almond sour cream cake

sometimes made with a box mix of white cake plus flour & sugar, etc. are added to that

some are made all 'scratch'

it's just a nice fluffy cake often used for tier cakes (wedding type cakes)

Thanks guys much appreciated. I did google but there was so many things out there, i would rather come on here and meet people on here and learn from the people in the forum.

Thanks for  your help xx

Most bakers use round pans 8 inches wide by 2 inches tall, or 9 inches wide by 2 inches tall. It's important to use whatever your recipe says. If you are changing the pan size, make sure that the pans you are using are the same volume (use water to figure this out).

Ganache is a blend of chocolate, cream and a bit of butter that you can use to frost a cake or make truffles. Here is my go to recipe.

A "standard" cake mix like you buy in a supermarket is meant to make a two-layer 8" or 9" (diameter) round cake, or a one-layer 9" x 13" rectangular cake, or two dozen cupcakes.  Those are the cake pans typically used in an American home kitchen.  (I am guessing from some of the words you're using that you may not be in the US, or maybe you are here now but not originally from the US, and I have no idea what is standard in other countries, though I would guess there are rough equivalents using metric measurements.)  The round and rectangular home-baker pans are usually 1 1/2" to 2" deep, and when you fill the pan about 2/3 full with batter, it bakes up into a cake layer that is around 1 1/2" tall.

But most people who make cakes as a business or a serious hobby prefer to have their layers be a full 2" tall, or nearly so.  So we use 2" deep pans and fill them higher, almost to the rim, meaning that one box mix, without anything added to it, is not quite enough to fill two 8" round pans.  When you bake two layers that way and stack them, with filling in the middle and frosting on top, the finished cake will be 4" or 5" tall.

There are also 3" deep pans, useful for baking a taller layer and then splitting it in half horizontally (this is called "torting") to put filling in the middle.  This results in a cake that's about 4" tall when filled and frosted, without baking two separate layers.  A deeper pan obviously requires more batter than a shallower one, if you want a taller resulting cake, although yes, you can use a 3" deep pan and just not fill it any higher than you would a 2".

A "scratch" recipe should specify what type of pans it is meant for, and how many. But a typical layer cake recipe will be about the same quantity of batter as you get from a standard boxed mix. If you want to bake the same recipe in a different size pan, you have to do some math. :) You can use a reference chart such as the one on the Wilton website that tells you how many cups of batter you'd use for a given size pan. The same thing applies if you are adding more ingredients (sometimes called "extender") to a box mix, which is often done for flavor purposes as well as making the mix fit a bigger pan.  But you can't change the *depth* of the pan too much without making other adjustments to the recipe. 

A 4" deep pan is unusual.  It might work to use a box mix and just fill your pan half full, but if you want to fill that pan you'd have better luck with a recipe meant for a loaf or Bundt pan (typically about 5" deep) rather than a layer cake recipe.

HTH

Holly