Cake density

What density changes

Two 20 cm tiers, one an airy chiffon and one a dense chocolate, and one weighs nearly twice the other. Density is what turns a size into a weight: grams per cubic centimetre of finished cake. It sets what a tier weighs and how many it serves. It also sets how big a cake recipe becomes when you scale it by weight.

• A tier’s weight and servings
• A cake recipe resized by weight
• The batter a tin-less recipe must make

The richness scale

One slider runs from a bare sponge to a rich filled cake. The seven named cake types are stretches of it, and the title reads whichever your value sits in. Drag it, jump to a type by name, or type the exact figure you weighed. When a recipe or the builder owns it, the scale names that source instead.

• Seven cake types as stretches of one scale
• Dragged, or jumped to by name
• An exact weighed value typed in
• Custom when off the scale

Measuring your own

The only true number is your own. Bake the cake, measure the cake itself, weigh it, and the density calculator does the division. When a tier or a part asks for a recipe that lacks one, a short sheet opens. It takes the weight, suggested from the ingredients less what the oven takes, then the size or the scale.

• Calculator from a baked cake’s size and weight
• Automatic on a recipe with size and weight
• A weight suggested from the ingredients
• A cream and cover scale for fillings

The usual range

A 20 cm cake, 8 cm tall, weighing 2.8 kg is 1.11 g/cm³. That is the top of the familiar band. Most cakes sit between a quarter and just over one. A tier outside that band gets an unusual-value warning to check the measurements. Creams and ganache sit above it and read as Custom. Anything above 1.40 is pulled back.

• Familiar cakes from 0.25 to 1.10
• A warning on a tier outside it
• Creams and ganache above, read as Custom
• Capped at 1.40

Common questions