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Baker's percentage for cookies, cakes & more
Baker's math is not only for bread. Any recipe with flour can be written as percentages of the flour — and once it is, scaling to a different pan or batch is one multiplication.
- Chocolate chip cookiesChocolate chip cookies written in baker's percentages: butter 80%, sugars 110%, chips 110%. Scale to any number of cookies and see grams per scoop size.
- Butter cakeYellow butter cake in baker's percentages with the cake-balancing rules (sugar vs flour, eggs vs fat, liquids vs sugar) and batter weights for every pan.
- Fudgy browniesFudgy cocoa brownies in baker's percentages: sugar 260%, butter 150%, eggs 130% of flour. Exact grams for 8 × 8, 9 × 9 and 9 × 13 inch pans.
- Cinnamon rollsSoft cinnamon roll dough in baker's percentages with milk, butter and eggs, plus filling grams and how many rolls fit an 8 × 8, 9 in round or 9 × 13 pan.
- Focaccia by pan sizeHow much focaccia dough for your pan: thin, standard and thick loadings for square, round, 9 × 13 and sheet pans, with every ingredient in grams.
The formulas side by side
| Bake | Sugar | Fat | Eggs | Water + milk | Total % | Flour share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chocolate chip cookies | 110% | 80% | 36% | 0% | 441.1% | 22.7% |
| Butter cake | 110% | 50% | 60% | 60% | 388% | 25.8% |
| Fudgy brownies | 200% | 150% | 130% | 0% | 641% | 15.6% |
| Cinnamon rolls | 15% | 15% | 15% | 55% | 203% | 49.3% |
| Focaccia by pan size | 0% | 4% | 0% | 80% | 187.1% | 53.4% |
Flour share is the flour's part of the total dough or batter weight: about 53% in focaccia but only 16% in brownies. The smaller the flour share, the more the other ingredients — sugar, fat and eggs — decide the texture.
Scaling by pan area
Cakes, brownies and focaccia scale by the area of the pan, as long as the depth stays the same: new batter = old batter × new area ÷ old area. A round pan's area is π × r²: a 9 in round is 63.6 in², an 8 in round only 50.3 in² — 21% less. Going from an 8 × 8 in pan (64 in²) to a 9 × 13 in pan (117 in²) multiplies everything by 1.83.