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By Caroline Lange and Allison Robicelli
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When settling on what cookware and bakeware to have at home you might not think it necessary to go out of your way to find the best cake pans, but trust me, it is. If I hadn’t personally baked thousands (yes, thousands) of cakes in my life, I would have assumed that a cake pan is a cake pan is a cake pan, and any one of them would do just fine. After all, so many cake pans look exactly the same, so how much difference could there possibly be?
Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Pro Nonstick Square Cake Pan
Turns out, the differences are considerable. Some cake pans have perfectly perpendicular sides while others have a slight slope, which can affect how the batter bakes up, the extent of browning at the edges, and the overall shape. There are cake pans that are truly non-stick, and others that just claim to be. There are 8" round cake pans and 9" round cake pans, because the industry likes to keep all you home bakers on your toes. The size, shape, volume, coating, and construction materials all contribute to the final product, so if you’re looking to bake the best cake, you’ll want the best cake pans in your cabinet.
A note: In this test we only considered square and round cake pans. I’ll cover items like loaf pans and springform pans with removable bottoms elsewhere.
The best round cake pan The best budget round cake pan The best square cake pan The best budget square cake pan What to know before buying a cake pan How I tested What I looked for Other cake pans I tested
Off the bat, the Great Jones Patty Cake is beautiful to look at. This has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on its performance, but it’s a very nice touch! I would never buy a cake pan based on looks, but when a stellar pan just so happens to be gorgeous, it’s a very nice bonus.
As for the cakes that pop out of the Great Jones cake pan, they, too, are beautiful. There’s no parchment paper or greasing-and-flouring needed—over the course of my testing, I didn’t even need to run a knife around the edge of the pan to loosen things up even once. Great Jones coats its aluminized steel baking pans with a nontoxic, nonstick ceramic coating that’s far more durable than Teflon-based coatings that can be easily chipped or scratched by metal utensils. The base of the Patty Cake is covered with a series of raised, corrugated ridges that helps prevent cake batter from baking onto the bottom of the pan. Simply flip the Patty Cake over and your perfectly baked cake will easily slide out.
Our top pick has perfectly perpendicular sides, making it ideal for layer cakes that demand straight edges. The aluminized steel construction conducts heat evenly, reducing the dreaded “doming” effect that can happen with subpar pans. In fact, not a single one of the cake layers I’ve made in this pan has required a significant amount of trimming on the top to make it level—if it even needed trimming at all.
Aside from heat conduction, aluminized steel also makes for a sturdy pan that’s oven-safe up to 500℉ and won’t warp at high temperatures. And in the event it does, Great Jones offers a lifetime warranty that guarantees a full replacement.
The only quibble I have with the Great Jones Patty Cake is the price, even though I believe it is worth every penny. At $30 it’s twice the price of our number two pick, and since lots of home cooks like to purchase pans in pairs for the sake of making layer cakes, it’s easy to balk at the priced differential. However, if you’re someone who bakes frequently, these pans will churn out consistently good results and are built to last a lifetime.
Dimensions: 9" diameter; 2" high; 9 cups liquid volume Color options: Raspberry, Broccoli, Blueberry Dishwasher-safe: Dishwasher-friendly, though hand-washing is recommended
When it comes to inexpensive baking tools, Epicurious has an abiding love for Fat Daddio, which also takes a top spot in cupcake pan testing. Here the brand’s sturdy but lightweight anodized aluminum pan browns every cake’s exterior beautifully. Though it can’t really be called a nonstick cake pan because it doesn’t have a nonstick coating of any kind, it does release cakes easily, turning out golden brown, perfectly even, and straight-sided cakes. The best news: Cleanup on this pan is extremely easy.
Fat Daddio’s cake pan has a satiny finish thanks to a nontoxic anodizing process, which seals the metal’s natural pores and makes for a more durable material. (As a result, the pan is easier to clean and won’t react with acidic ingredients like citrus or tomatoes.)
This pan has a rolled edge that sticks out slightly from the side of the pan; at first I was afraid this would make for harder-to-clean nooks and crannies. Actually, it made it much easier to hold the pan securely with bulky oven mitts. As a bonus, Fat Daddio also makes anodized aluminum pans in multiple depths (up to 4") and diameters (up to 18"!), offering more size and variety than other brands. This is great for avid cake bakers who want more versatility and consistency.
The only downside to these cake pans? They don’t stack well (thanks to those same super-straight sides).
Fat Daddio's Round Cake Pan
Dimensions: 9" diameter; 2" high Dishwasher-safe: No
The Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Pro is an effective nonstick pan; no parchment, cooking spray, or greasing-and-flouring required. Brownies baked up into even, level squares that easily slid out when I inverted the pan, with perpendicular sides and precise 90° corners. The brownies also remained fudgy throughout, slightly crisp around the edges, and with firm corner pieces that were well cooked, but not the least bit dry.
At $35 this was one of the pricier pans that I tested, but was also the best constructed. Made of sturdy aluminized steel with a wire-reinforced rim, this pan should hold up to just about anything you throw at it: high oven temps (up to 450℉, which the brand lists as the maximum safe temp); repeated cycles in the dishwasher; getting buried under a pile of baking dishes, baking sheets, and Bundt pans in your cabinet. Williams-Sonoma’s Goldtouch Pro nonstick coating is ceramic-based, which makes it resistant to accidental nicks and scratches from metal utensils.
The Goldtouch Pro comes in both 8" and 9" sizes; I recommend buying an 8" if you’ll primarily be baking brownies, blondies or other bar cookies, especially if you like yours taller, richer, and fudgier. The 9" pan is better suited to quick breads and coffee cakes, or for brownies and bars that are thinner and crisper.
Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Pro Nonstick Square Cake Pan
Dimensions: 8" square; 2" high Dishwasher-safe: Yes
This pan isn’t perfect, but it still produces brownies that are brilliantly fudgy with corners that are cooked just right. The sides are slightly sloped, which isn’t ideal if you’re making a square layer cake (not as common as a round one, but they happen), but it’s fine for brownies, bars, quick breads, coffee cakes, and the like. It also has slightly rounded corners that prevent you from cutting things into perfectly uniform portions. But that is more of an aesthetic quibble, and it doesn’t negatively affect the quality of the finished product. The advantage of sloped sides and rounded corners is that they make these pans stackable, which is a major plus if you’re tight on storage space.
While Wilton says this pan is technically dishwasher-safe, they recommend hand-washing it with warm, soapy water instead. Cleaning isn’t all that difficult, though—just like our top pick, the nonstick coating on the Wilton works well, with brownies easily sliding out of the pan without needing any extra assistance. Unlike our top pick, it’s a thinner steel pan with a silicone polyester nonstick coating, making it less durable in the long run. Still, if you’re someone who bakes only occasionally, it’s a good buy.
Wilton Perfect Results Premium Nonstick Square Cake Pan
Dimensions: 8" x 8" x 2.25" Dishwasher-safe: Technically, yes, but hand-washing is recommended
The most important thing to consider when buying a cake pan is size, as the home cake pan industry maddeningly manufactures most of their pans in one of two different sizes: 8" and 9". Though it might not seem like one measly inch could have much of an effect on a pan’s performance, it does. Unless you do the math to scale a recipe up, cakes baked in a 9" pan will (obviously) be slightly shorter and have shorter baking times, resulting in layers that are slightly less fluffy than those baked in 8" pans. Brownies in 9" pans will be flatter, with drier edges and crispier corners.
Not a single cake pan I tested had its measurements etched on it, meaning if you didn’t commit it to memory when you bought your pan, you’ll either need to whip out your ruler or turn to Google, which is silly. My advice: When setting your timer, always follow the directions for a 9" pan. You can always leave the pan in the oven for a few extra minutes if it’s undercooked, but you can’t reverse overcooking.
Also, as noted in some reviews above: Many cake pans have slightly sloped sides, which makes them stackable. While this might be a plus when it comes to storage, it’s a minus when you’re trying to do the best baking. Perfectly perpendicular sides bake batters better, period.
Though I do love the taste of a homemade cake, I wanted the testing process to reflect the most likely usage of every round cake pan, and that meant using boxed cake mix. Another benefit to this choice is that it essentially eliminates a skewed result based on the level of one’s baking skills. Cake mixes are not made to fail: Anyone can make them, and they produce consistent results. I decided to use yellow cake mix, as the light shade would make any burning or uneven browning plainly visible.
For the square pans, I used the same logic as the round ones and went with a boxed mix, but instead of cake, I made brownies. While there are cake recipes that specify using a square pan (particularly quick breads which, let’s be real, are actually cake), I think the majority of home bakers will be using their square pans for boxed brownies. In 2020—the same year that everyone on Instagram was making banana bread—Americans purchased 166.8 million boxes of brownie mix. Even if a square pan can puts out a lovely baked goods like cakes or quick breads, if it can’t put out a banging batch of brownies, it’s worthless.
As for the process itself, I followed every set of directions on both the pans and boxed mixes to the letter. If a pan claimed to be nonstick, I did not grease it, nor did I line it with parchment. In fact, multiple pans had directions specifying that they should not be used with cooking sprays at all, as it could cause the formation of a gummy, impossible-to-remove residue that could both damage the pan and affect your baking.
After the cakes and brownies were cooled and unmolded, I compared and contrasted them in several ways.
Though there are many single-tier cakes that can come from a round cake pan, but for the purposes of testing I looked for cake pans that could produce perfectly stackable layers. Though it’s nice to have a pile of cake scraps you can nosh on all by yourself, significantly domed tops and slanted sides result in a lot of “lost” cake, and trimming layers to be perfectly level can be difficult for beginners or novices.
I first looked at how much height the cake had gained in the oven, whether the top had baked up relatively flat or had developed a dome, and if it was the latter, exactly how significant was it. A domed top can be the death of a layer cake and must be trimmed away before stacking, which can end up leaving you with half the amount of cake you were counting on. I’m also not much of a fan of pans with sloped edges, which produce layer cakes that are uneven on the sides, which makes frosting difficult. (You could trim the edges off to even things out, but that’s more work for you, and less cake for everyone else.)
After assessing pan shapes (which instantly disqualified ⅔ of the lot from best cake pan contention), I checked each cake for color, looking for spots of excessive or uneven browning. Next I cut each cake into pieces and compared sections from the edge and middle on flavor and texture. Our top two pans produced cake layers that were as moist and delicious in the center as they were at the edges.
When judging the brownies, I baked in the square pans. My first concern was that they were level throughout; in this instance, issues of doming and sloping lead to burnt edges and unpleasantly dried out corners. Unlike round cake pans, the geometry of a square pan almost ensures uneven baking, with corners always cooking faster than middles. But this isn’t always a bad thing, particularly in brownie baking! Instead of seeking out textures that were even, I sought ones that were pleasant—lightly crispy corners, chewy edges, and fudgy center slices. If a square pan could nail all three textures, it was a best cake pan contender.
Though the sides of cakes baked in the Caraway cake pan didn’t come out burnt, they were significantly darker than that of our first place pick. Layers also baked up shorter, with enough doming on top to require trimming before frosting.
Cake layers came out beautifully golden, but baked a bit too fast around the edges, resulting in a cake with a slight dimple in the center.
Cuisinart 9-Inch Round Cake Pan
While this did a fine job of baking up cake layers, it has slightly sloped sides which result in an uneven profile.
Le Creuset Round Cake Pan
Cake layers came out with a pronounced dome and sloped sides that require trimming if being used in layer cakes.
Calphalon Nonstick Bakeware Round Cake Pan
While it felt sturdily made (it was both the heaviest and most expensive of all the pans tested), the Oxo pan’s instructions specified that the pan should not be used with baking spray; since baking spray is such a go-to for most home bakers, this felt like an inconvenience.
Oxo Good Grips Nonstick Pro Round Cake Pan
Wilton the Wilton pan browned cakes unevenly and was so light it felt flimsy.
Wilton Nonstick Ultra Bake Professional Round Cake Pan
The Winco performed similarly (and was similarly disappointing) to the Wilton. It didn’t feel sturdy and baked up uneven cakes. Even the low price point couldn’t make up for that.
Nordic Ware has produced winners in some our other tests, like its half-sheet pan, but in this case the cakes didn’t brown that well.
Caraway’s square pan isn’t actually a square—its heavily-rounded sides make it a technical squircle. (Yes, that’s a real shape and a real word.)
This square pan also veers into squircle territory, with rounded corners and sloping sides that result in unevenly cooked edges.
Le Creuset Square Cake Pan
The brownies from Fat Daddio’s square pan came out extra-crispy, with a bottom that verged on burnt. Though more heavy-duty than many of its competitors, this professional-grade anodized aluminum pan doesn’t have a nonstick coating, which would have been nice.
Fat Daddio’s Square Cake Pan
Like Fat Daddio’s, Nordic Ware’s aluminum pan is sturdy, but lacks a nonstick coating, which might be a turnoff for people who don’t like fussing with parchment paper. It also has significantly rounded corners, which I’m no fan of.
Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Square Cake Pan
The bottom of this pan is covered with corrugated ridges that are meant to prevent batter from baking on. However, they seem to accomplish the opposite, as brownies didn’t remove cleanly, and cooked unevenly as well.
Oxo Good Grips Nonstick Pro Square Cake Pan
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