How to Bake a Layer Cake Using a Sheet Pan

By Stephanie Loo

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The first time I came across the method of making layer cakes using a sheet pan was at a Milk Bar cake decorating class that I took in high school at the bakery's Williamsburg location in Brooklyn. The room smelled strongly of vanilla extract and was full of fellow eager bakers, each of us with a penchant for nostalgic sweets. I hadn't made many layer cakes at this point in my life, but as a teenager growing up in New York City, I was obsessed with Milk Bar and so excited to learn the secrets behind its famed birthday cake.

As it turns out, the first tip was that the bakery's iconic round, tiered funfetti cake is actually baked in a sheet pan. Instead of baking cake layers in circular pans, we were shown how to pour the cake batter into rectangular sheet pans. Once the baked cakes came out of the oven, and cooled, my fellow cake classmates and I cut the large rectangle into rounds, which made three perfect cake layers, plus plenty of scraps for decorating the cake (and for snacking or turning into cake truffles).

Now, as a professional pastry cook, I find myself baking genoise and other sponge cakes in sheet pans all the time, to turn them into exquisite entremets. If I want to guarantee perfect layers for those restaurant desserts, I’ll always reach for the sheet pan.

There are plenty more benefits to this technique than just the bonus of some extra scraps for snacking and decorating. Sheet pan cakes bake flat and even, with no unpredictable doming or cracking, and this allows for more uniform cake layers. Sheet pans also tend to be less tall than round pans, which means less baking and cooling time. And if you’re baking all three layers in one pan, you only have to rotate that pan once while baking, eliminating the need to juggle the tins from top to bottom, front to back.

In instances where I’ve had to bake a cake in a friend's kitchen, I’ve never been able to depend on them having three round cake pans of the same size. Sure, if there's one cake pan available, you could ostensibly divide the batter in three, bake and cool each cake layer one at a time, and wash the single pan in between bakes, but who has time for that? And in the last two professional kitchens I’ve worked in, I don't think the restaurants owned a single round cake pan. If we did, we’d have to stack them up to the ceiling because of the sheer number of cakes we produce.

In her newest cookbook, Sheet Pan Sweets, Molly Gilbert relies on a baking sheet for all 80-plus desserts. The second chapter of her book is dedicated to layered cakes and roll cakes. One of my favorites: her Lemon Poppy Seed Layer Cake, a tender, moist, lemon-forward cake that pairs perfectly with a classic cream cheese frosting. When you cut into it, you’ll be astounded at the exact even height of each cake layer—and it’ll probably be the easiest triple-layer cake you’ve ever made.

Rather than buying sets of evenly sized round cake pans, all you need to pull off this pastry chef flex is a rectangular 18-by-13-inch metal pan that's 1-inch high on the sides—a size that's typically known as a half-sheet pan. (Sometimes it's referred to as a rimmed baking sheet, cookie sheet, or baking tray.) In the same way that you would grease cake rounds with butter or cooking spray and then line them with rounds of parchment to fit the bottom of the pan, you simply grease the sheet pan and line it with a rectangular shape of parchment paper to fit the pan.

The easiest way to do this at home is to place a cardboard round or upside-down plate on the sheet cake as a guide and use the tip of a paring knife to cut out three circles. Feel free to save any cake scraps for decorating the outside or top of the cake or repurpose them in a trifle.

From an 18-by-13-inch pan, you can easily get up to three 6-inch or 8-inch round cake layers. For a 6-inch cake, the three whole circles will fit easily within the rectangular cake slab. For an 8-inch cake, you will have to cut out two full circles and two half circles from the cake. The half circles will make up the bottom layer of the cake while the full circles will be the top two cake layers. Any cake larger than 8 inches in diameter will require another sheet tray or quarter-sheet tray.

Nearly all recipes intended for home bakers call for baking cakes in multiple round cake pans, whether it's 6-, 8-, or 9-inch pans, but a sheet pan can act as any or all of these sizes. Maybe you want a wedding-cake-esque tower of tapering layers. A sheet pan has your back. Maybe you want to make a cartoonishly tall and narrow layer cake. A sheet pan is up to the task. Or maybe you want to skip the circle idea completely in favor of a heart-shaped cake or a rectangle that cuts into perfect index-card-size slices.

Making layer cakes can be an intimidating undertaking, but this simple switch streamlines your process, while saving you precious storage space. The pan you’re probably already using to roast your broccoli for dinner tonight is every pastry chef's best friend.