Changing Your Recipe to Fit Your Pan

Holidays all too often come near the end of the school semester (a busy time for us teachers), and they always come with a lot of food preparation. I simply don't have it in me to do much in the immediate aftermath of a holiday.

That's why post-Thanksgiving (post- any holiday really though I'm writing this one after Thanksgiving) cooking is all about the KISS principle: Keep It Simple Stupid.

Don't overextend yourself and see if you can use up those little bits of holiday things here and there.

Rice Krispie treats are just about perfect for this because they're easily adapted to having things mixed in. They are also ridiculously easy to make.

The problem this year was that I only had 6 oz of the required 10 oz of marshmallows I'd need for my recipe.

I also had a partial box of cereal (though this isn't a problem, if you don't have Rice Krispies, try another cereal or mix and match). I'm not going to buy more of either.

The conversions I did in making my snack gives me the perfect chance to help you if you've never had to convert. My tips and the Rice Krispie treat recipe are below.

Converting ingredients is pretty simple. Let's walk through that together.

The 6 oz of marshmallows were the limiting factor for me. I had plenty of the other stuff. So, let's key off that.

I have 6/10 = 0.6 of the necessary marshmallows, so I'll make everything else 0.6 of the total to keep the ratios the same. For example, 6 cups of cereal for a full recipe means I'll need 6 x 0.6 = 3.6 cups of cereal now.

That's close enough to 3 1/2 cups, and these are Rice Krispie treats after all, so I measured out 3 full cups and one rounded half cup and moved on with life. This isn't critical. What if the exact amount was more critical?

First, I would try to do weight. Weights are easy to break down or increase. Not too long ago I had to do 1.5 times the cornmeal for recipe.

The original amount needed was 1 3/4 cup, but the recipe also said I could weigh out 8 3/4 oz. Weighting out 13 1/8 oz (1.5 x 8.75) is a hell of a lot easier than estimating 2 5/8 cups (1.5 x 1.75) so I used my scale.

If the recipe doesn't give a weight, here's a handy tip: there are 16 tablespoons in a cup. Taking my Rice Krispie treats as an example, I would take my needed 3.6 cups ofcereal and peel off the 3 1/2 cups. The remaining 0.1 cups I will convert to tablespoons:

0.1 x 16 = 1.6 or about 1 1/2 tablespoon

So, I would measure 3 1/2 cups and then add another 1 1/2 tablespoon.

Let's do another to cement the concept. The treats call for 1/2 cup of peanut butter, so I did just like before:

0.6 x 0.5 = 0.3 cups peanut butter

0.3 x 16 = 4.8 or about 5 tablespoons (I actually shied down to 4 1/2 because shorting the peanut butter is better than having too much!)

The other thing to remember when converting volumes and trying to keep some precision is that there are 3 teaspoons in every tablespoon. Let's say you need to do a 1.5 batch of a quick bread needing 1 tablespoon of baking powder. Let's convert:

1 x 1.5 = 1.5 tablespoon.

That is, 1 tablespoon and 0.5 x 3 = 1 1/2 teaspoon.

That's how to convert ingredients either up or down. What about pan size? You will notice that in my recipe above it calls for a 9 x 13 pan when you do a full batch. How did I know to go to an 8 x 8?

First, I'll share some quick rules of thumb before showing you the rule.

An 8 x 8 pan is about half a 9 x 13 pan.

A 9" round cake pan is about the same as an 8 x 8 pan.

If your recipe calls for a 8 1/2" x 4 1/2" loaf pan but you only have a 9 x 5, don't worry, you can still bake in the bigger pan, you just need to make sure you start checking for doneness about 10 minutes early (and be okay with a wider, shorter product).

How did I arrive at these rules? Some by experience, but mostly by calculation. If you can master the simple calculations below you can always do your figuring and be ready for any situation.

When it comes to baked goods, outside of huge changes in area, the determinant of cooking time is the thickness. That is, a big square biscuit 3/4" thick is going to cook about the same as a slightly smaller circular biscuit of that same thickness.

That's why my rule of thumb above about loaf pans has it that you need to check about 10 minutes early when going up a loaf pan size: the increase in pan area makes a thinner loaf which cooks faster.

When you need to go up or down a pan size to accommodate what you have on hand, keep your area the same. In the case of my Rice Krispie treats, I had a 0.6 recipe that would normally have gone in a 9 x 13 pan. Unless I want them super-thin, I needed to go down in pan size.

A 9 x 13 pan has 9 x 13 = 117 square inches of area.

0.6 of this is 0.6 x 117 = 70 square inches.

The closest pan to this would be an 8 x 8 which has 64 square inches of area.

Let's come at it from the other direction. If you saw a bar cookie recipe you wanted to try which calls for an 8 x 8 pan, but your friend has your 8 x 8 and you only have a 9 x 9 on hand, what can you do? Upsize by the same factor as the ratio of the areas.

9 x 9 = 81 square inches

8 x 8 = 64 square inches

Make your recipe bigger by 81/64 = 1.25 times and keep the temp/cooking time the same.

Last thing. What to do about circular pans? They're just like the calculation above, but instead of squaring the length of the side of a square pan, you just find the ratio of the square of the diameter.

I have a recipe for fresh-corn cornbread that calls for a 10" cast iron skillet. I do not have one and am not going to buy one right now. I do, however, have a 12" cast iron skillet.

12 x 12= 144 square inches

10 x 10 = 100 square inches

So I up my recipe by 144/100 = 1.44 or 1.5 times for calculational ease, tacking on some extra time to account for the fact that it's a bit above 1.44.

I hope that this has been helpful. If you have a question, please reach out. I'm not the smartest and most experienced baker, but I'll see if I can help!

info@goodthingsfromcoryskitchenandyard.com.