Not an emergency, obviously, but I need to take the brownies to a potluck tonight, so a quick answer would be great.
Is there any reason not to bake brownies in round cake pans? I’ll be using my ordinary recipe, which I generally cook in a 9X13 rectangular pan, but I plan to split the batter so I can bring some with walnuts and some that have white chocolate chips instead, in case of allergies. I know ordinary cake recipes can be done either in one large pan or two rounds, with maybe a slight change in how long you bake, with no other real affect on texture or whatever.
Is it the same for brownies? Anyone have any experience with this, or just an informed guess? How did the baking time change?
To me it seems the biggest effect will be not having corner pieces but sometimes things can be weird. Thanks!
It’s fine. The only difference will be the depth of the batter, thicker will take slightly longer baking time. If the surface area of the round pan is less than the surface area of the 9x13 pan the batter will be thicker and take longer to bake.
It’s going to make a difference whether you use 9" round pans or 8" round pans.
Your 9x13 pan should have 117 square inches of space. The 9" pan should have about 63.5 square inches, which means splitting the batter evenly will make the brownies a little thinner; the 8" pan should have about 50 square inches, which means the brownies will be noticeably thicker.
Ideal might be using one 9" and one 8" pan, that comes to 113.5 square inches, so the brownies would only be a very small amount thicker than normal.
I don’t bake much, but I do bake brownies. I use both round and rectangular pans. The only real difference is the area of the pans, as Roderick_Femm noted. Just check for doneness and you’ll be fine.
Sidejack - but if you want fun brownies with lots of cool crispy bits (still no corners though) I’ve done a few batches in non-traditional pans. My two favorite are to do my brownies in (well-greased) smallish cupcake tins, which greatly increases the amount of crunch to gooey (and probably would be nice and easy to serve to a group) -OR- in a bundt pan which added a ton of texture.
But again, if I was bringing brownies to a potluck or similar family food gathering, small cupcake brownies have always been my go-to.
I don’t know if this applies if you’re making scratch brownies, but the box mixes say if you’re using non-stick pans to shorten the baking time by three minutes. I’m only mentioning this because I haven’t seen too many glass round pans and assume if you’re using cake pans they’re non-stick. Plus, an 8" x 8" glass pan uses a lower temperature and a MUCH longer baking time, so I would figure a non-stick to behave similarly. But I’m not Betty Crocker.
I’ve only ever seen normal sized cupcake tins (I’d guess they’re around 2.5") and itty bitty ones I’ve mostly only used to hold pieces of fudge or other candy (around 1"). By ‘small cupcake’ do you mean a third size?
The bundt cake pan is an interesting idea, you could just serve it as a ring and let people hack off a slice. Cutting brownies neatly is the more tiresome part of the whole production.
Thanks, but I’m old school – I inherited most of my bakeware when my grandmother moved to a retirement home. Virtually everything is aluminum or stainless steel!
Just fine IMHO, no different than they ever did, though I did end up baking for about five minutes longer than usual. At the end of the potluck there were a few of the ones with the white chocolate chips left, none of the walnut ones – I found that interesting. But I know that one of the women there alone has two sons and a DIL living with her now due to covid/business problems so I offered the leftovers to her and she gladly took them off my hands.
Um?? I think this would result in a horrible mess in the oven as the batter dribbled off all sides of the cookie sheet? Or at least my type of ‘ancient’ aluminum cookie sheets. Totally flat sheets with a bit of one of the short sides curled up to make a place to grab the sheet.
Or maybe you’re thinking of something more like what I’d call a jelly roll pan, with a shallow half-inch rim completely around it? Which, well, the ‘brownies’ would certainly cook fast, but I think they would be dry and maybe crispy all the way through, and really wouldn’t be like brownies at all.
As far as I can tell yes, but you might also want to double check your measurements on the small one. In my house I have the mini I mentioned, which is more-or-less half sheet sized pan, which is 4x6 muffins/cupcakes, and the top is almost exactly 2" in diameter. I’d say it’s also about 1/2 the depth of my next cupcake size.
The ‘traditional’ I use is 3x4 muffins/cupcakes, and then I also have a giant, which is 2x3 for nearly Costco-sized muffins (a slight exaggeration, darn those Costco muffins are HUGE).
I do suspect though that the ‘itty bitty one’ of yours is the same as my mini, the openings are larger on the ruler than they are on the eyes. And yes they’re like the one-bite brownies you see in the stores for sale, which is where I got the inspiration.
They’re great sizes if you’re working on portion control, and want to use decent quality ingredients.
Being a self-proclaimed brownie connoisseur, and taking the technical part of the discussion away: i don’t find a rounded brownie edge to be aesthetically or emotionally pleasing. The taste could be exactly the same but I wouldn’t be satisfied with only a sliver side piece, I’d have to have a square one for balancing purposes. It would feel like a brownie-wanna-be.
I understand completely! Tradition, tradition! Tradition!
No, I cut the brownies into squares, rather smaller than I usually would, because people at pot lucks generally like to have little bits of lots of things to try a whole variety. This involved first cutting the round brownie into a square, ‘wasting’ rather sizeable crescents (sort of, don’t know what to call those shapes, arcs on one side, flat on the other, thick in the middle tapering down at the end?)
I know this may sound blasphemous to all the home bakers out there but I really like the brownies from Domino’s Pizza. They are thin and hard. Dopes anyone know what of type pan they use? It is it a cookie sheet? Or something like the Jelly Roll pan StarvingbutStrong described?
but sometimes things can be weird. Thanks!
, you served brownies with NO edge pieces? 