Frosting question

[badseed1980]

Let's say I have a recipe for a frosting. It says, "Frosts a cake of size x" or something like that. Is there a way of calculating how many average size cupcakes that amount will frost?

(Cross-posted to cooking

Comments

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

My guess: consult your cake recipe to see if it has a conversion of how many cupcakes the same amount of batter would make. (I know a lot of "cake in a box" products will tell you what size pans and how many cupcakes their batter will make, so some recipes also may.) You could use that as a guideline, and have extra just in case.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, most recipes I see don't have that. :(

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Here's some links I found:
http://community.livejournal.com/kitchenfaq/273056.html
http://www.baking911.com/cakes/cupcakes.htm

That should help.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Thanks hon. I just got a pretty good answer from a person on cooking. She said that a typical recipe that frosts a 9" round 2-layer cake (which seems to be the standard for a stand-alone frosting recipe) "frosts about two dozen cupcakes thinly (I don't like frosting to overpower the cupcakes) with enough leftover to probably frost a third dozen." I assume that it will frost 2 dozen generously.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Fits pretty much what the links were saying, so yay. :)

[nepenthedreams]

Sounds like a math problem doesn't it? Something with a lot of geometry.
Seems like you'd have to do something like calculate the circumference of a cupcake and figure out how many cupcakes fit into the cake...

of course, if they are also frosting the sides of the cake, it adds another dimension that I don't even know how to handle.

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

You would need to use pi to figure out how to frost a cake! :D

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there something about a cake made of pie, recently?

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Yes. blue_gargantua told me of this remarkable creation.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

My friend amanofhats was probably the one s/he linked to. You can find links to pictures in his LJ archive. :)

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Nope, it was someone local.

[elissa-carey.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Delicious pi. Delicious cake. And a friend of mine once made a cake made of pie.

The Math

[meadmaker.livejournal.com]

So, if:

x = cake radius
y = cupcake radius
n = number of cupcakes that you can frost from one cake's worth of frosting

And remembering:

area = Pi * r^2

Then:

n * Pi * y^2 = Pi * x^2
n * y^2 = x^2
    x^2
n = ---
    y^2

Of course, that assumes that you use the same thickness of frosting for cupcakes as you do for cake.

Re: The Math

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Only issue is that most cake frosting recipes also include the sides of the cake, not just the top, and often between two layers as well. I'll just use the "generally, for a 2-layer 9" round cake, you can get 2 dozen cupcakes" formula. :)

[evaelisabeth.livejournal.com]

You could just make a double batch and freeze the extra :-)