The Best 9-Inch Round Cake Pans

Our favorite round cake pan, the light-colored Williams Sonoma Goldtouch Pro Nonstick Round Cake Pan, produced tall, evenly baked, golden-brown cake. It also turned out uniformly well-browned pizza. All food baked in it slid out easily, thanks to the pan’s nonstick coating. Our Best Buy, the Wilton Perfect Results Nonstick Round Cake Pan, baked beautiful cakes, too. Plus, it has wide handles that made it easy for us to securely grip when removing it from the oven. The food we baked in it released cleanly from the pan. We docked its rating slightly because the food we baked in it wasn't as evenly browned as food baked in our winner.

What You Need to Know

Whether you’re baking layer cakes, upside-down fruit cakes, pan pizza, or cinnamon buns, a good cake pan is a baker’s best friend. After all your hard work of measuring, mixing, and baking, it’s disappointing and frustrating to pull your cake out of the oven and realize it’s unevenly baked or that it’s stuck to the pan. To produce tall layers and to accommodate voluminous fruit upside-down cakes, we like 9-inch round cake pans that are at least 2 inches deep. We vetoed angled sides because straight sides make better layer cakes. To find out which cake pan is best, we purchased and tested a range of 9-inch cake pans. We baked Fluffy Yellow Layer Cake and Pepperoni Pan Pizza in each, comparing the results. 

What to Look For

Light-Colored Pans: We slightly preferred light pans to dark ones. The two light-colored pans in our lineup produced golden brown and evenly baked cake. The cake was tall and airy with a flat, even top. Baking in a light colored pan reduces the chance that you will over-bake your cakes because the browning happens more slowly than in a dark pan. We’re happy to note the pan’s light color didn’t prevent it from developing deep browning when we made pizza in it. 

Slick Nonstick Surface: Pans in our lineup with a good nonstick coating released all food with ease, leaving nothing behind. Delicate cake and sticky pizza slid out of these pans completely intact, looking beautiful. Nonstick coatings also make for a quick cleanup.

Nice to Have 

Handles: Two of the pans in our lineup had distinct wide handles, which made it easier to rotate them in the oven as well as move them from the oven to the cooling rack. We loved how secure our grip felt, even with bulky oven mitts on.

What to Avoid

Uncoated Pans: Pans without nonstick coatings make it very challenging to remove food without damaging it. Despite thorough greasing, pizza fused to the pans without nonstick coating. They are also harder to clean than pans with nonstick coating.

Other Considerations

Dark Pa... read more