In 2019, I declared it as “My Year of the Cake”. I am really more of a pie personyou see, and while I've always made cakes that were good, I had never made cakes that I thought were really great. So I gave myself a whole year to crack the cake code.
Armed with a copy of Christina Tosi All About CakeI have stocked my pantry cake flour, parchmentand a lot vanilla extract, and baked. I was pleased with its simplicity naked cakes (so easy for my clumsy hands to decorate!) and recognized the power of a good one offset shoulder. But there was a Christina Tosi trick that completely changed the way I made layer cakes: instead of baking them in round pans, I often use a half sheet pan instead.
Rossi Anastopoulos
Christina Tosi isn't the only baker who likes this method: Pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz also includes this tip in her upcoming cookbook. More than cake. “You bake a cake in a round pan, I don't care what kind of cake batter it is, it will cube,” she says. Some of those cubes can be upgraded using cake strips, but you may still need to do some leveling, which can be harder than it looks. By comparison, says Natasha, “You bake your cake layers in a half sheet pan, you get a perfectly flat cake.” No fine leveling required.
Another advantage of using a half-sheet pan is the thinner layers: instead of inaccurately dividing the cake layers for the filling – a complicated task that Natasha admits she dislikes – the shorter half cake sheet can be placed and filled as is.
Photography by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Liz Neily
She also likes the versatility of a half sheet pan. “It's like a piece of construction paper. You can cut (the cake) into whatever shape and size you want.” This means you can make any size or shape cake without having to worry about stacking multiple pans or baking in batches. When I make cakes, I just use a piece of parchment as a guide (I can go with a standard 8″ round or cut it to 4″, or choose rectangles or squares) and use a sharp knife to cut out my seams.
Of course, cutting round cake layers from a rectangular cake sheet can leave you with little trim. Christina Tosi has a solution for that, too: She uses a cake ring and presses large scraps of cake into the mold to act as the bottom layer in a three-layer cake. Beneath the layers of cake, filling and cream, no one can tell that this scrap book wasn't originally a single piece of cake.
There are more options: For example, Camilla Wynne recently shared her method of making rum balls from any pastry scraps. Leftover cake is perfect for this, and now I always crumble the cake pieces into a bowl, add a good splash of rum, and mix it until I have a smooth, sticky paste, which I roll into small, round shapes. similar to truffles. These can even make a beautiful decoration for the last frosted cake (I did!). On the other hand, baker Michelle Polzine includes a tip in her book Baking in the 20th century cafe to dry cake scraps in a low oven, then put in a food processor or crush with a pin to make crumbs that can be used as moisture barrier under the fruit in the pie or as a garnish for the tops of cakes. Crumbs can be refrigerated until ready to use.
Rossi Anastopoulos
How to bake a layer cake in a half sheet pan
Any layer cake recipe that yields three 8″ or 9″ cakes will work in a half sheet pan with no adjustments necessary. If the recipe yields two 8″ to 9″ cakes, I increase the recipe by 1.5 (if you're measuring by weight, instead of volume, that's a small point).
Grease the half-sheet pan with fat and place it parchment. Pour the batter, spread it into an even layer using your offset spatula, then bake as directed in the recipe. I always start checking at least 10 minutes before the baking time listed in the recipe, as the cake tends to be thinner and cook faster. Use it our tips to tell if your cake is baked.
Once it's baked and cooled, take a piece of parchment paper in the shape of the cake layers you want (for example, an 8″ round) and use it to trace the layers using a sharp knife. If you're making a three-layer 8 cake, cut two full circles and then two half circles, which you will place together to make the third layer of the cake – use this at the end Remove from the pan then stack, fill and freeze.
One last tip: Because the cake is cut with a knife rather than baked in a round pan, the edges may be a little rougher and have more exposed crumbs. For this reason, using a crumb coat it is very important for achieving a perfect frosted finish.
Up your cake game with ours Cake Baking Guide.
Cover picture (Hard chocolate cake) by Rick Holbrook; food styling by Kaitlin Wayne.
