Cups of batter in full sheet pan?

Don't know the answer, Lentil. But for a quick determination, why not fill the pan with water, and measure that? Should be a pretty close match, I would think.

From my experiences I found that a plain white cake batter is 12 cups while a more dense batter....

say for a chocolate batter is around 14 + cups. I found this out when I worked in a bakery.

I always dipped my gallon measurer right into the mixer and that's how I found out how many cups will go into a regular and a half sheet pan.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lentil 

Thanks, but that's not quite what I meant. 

 

We use at least 16 cups in a 12x18 cake pan for a 2 inch high cake, so logically, I would think doubling that for a full sheet pan with side extenders would be the answer, but wanted to be sure.

Okay Lentil.....but a full size sheet pan is 18 X 26 X 1 1/2....so the extra 8 inches long by 1/2 inch more high would not take double the batter that way.

I'm not a mathematician, but seem to recall that volume increased geometrically. So doubling the size of a container increases the volume something like four time.

Be that as it may, the formular for volume is simple. Applying it to the above numbers the volume of a half-sheet is 216 cubic inches; that of a full sheet 324---making it 1/3 larger by volume.

Thus, if you're using 16 cups in the half sheet, another five+ cups will likely fill the pan.

Lentil,

Hesitating to disagree with KYH, doubling the area, i.e. going from 1/2 sheet (12x18) to full sheet (24x18) for the same depth, 2", is double the volume. Now, if we're talking circular pans, doubling the diameter will quadruple the volume for a given depth, in other word, a 16" diameter cake pan will hold four times the batter that an 8" cake pan would.

For rectangular pans:

V = LxWxD so for 1/2 sheet pan: L=18, W=12, and D = 2  V=18x12x2= 432 cubic inches

for a full sheet: L=24, W=18, and D=2 V=24x18x2 = 864 cubic inches.

Now, there are 14.6456 cubic inches in 1 cup so, if you use 16 cups for a half sheet, that's 234+ cubic inches, the batter is 1" deep

Remember, dimensions for sheet-pans are nominal, so they may vary slightly, also, when using extenders, the bottom measurements control, the top measurements will be greater because of the slanted sides.

Oh, one more point, in my experience, and I just went and looked, quarter, half, and full sheets are all the same depth. Mine happen to be 1" deep.

For circular pans

V = 3.14159xRxRxD where R = radius = 1/2 diameter and D=depth (it is pi R squared times depth, can't figure out exponents!)