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See why.Tube Pans
A tube pan may not seem like essential baking equipment—until you try making angel food cake in any other pan.
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What You Need To Know
Do you need a tube pan? We've posed and tested this question numerous times throughout the years, and each time we come back to the same answer: For the best angel food cake, yes, a tube pan is essential. While most other cakes get their lift from baking powder and/or baking soda, egg-foam cakes rely on whipped eggs folded into the batter for lift. Because the cake is so delicate, it will collapse into a sticky mess if it's not cooked and cooled properly.
Tube pans—tall, round pans with a conical tube in the center—are designed to help egg-foam cakes in three ways. First, the tall sides provide a surface for the batter to cling to as it bakes, so it can rise high (unlike other cake pans, tube pans are typically not greased so that the cake can cling to the pan as it rises). Second, the conical center provides more heat to the middle of the cake, so the center rises and sets at the same rate as the outside. Third, a hole in the middle of the pan allows you to invert the pan onto a bottle for cooling; the pull of gravity prevents the cake from collapsing into the pan. Many tube pans have additional features to aid in cake release or inversion; we surveyed the market and found pans with handles, feet, and removable bottoms. Do these features really make for a better cake?
Easy Baking, Not-So-Easy Cooling
We tested five tube pans, priced about $15.00 to $30.00. Our lineup included a mix of nonstick and uncoated pans with a variety of features: three had removable bottoms, two had feet, and one had handles. We used them to make Angel Food Cake (a classic application) and Cold-Oven Pound Cake, a denser, more traditional cake that we sometimes make in a tube pan.
All five pans produced angel food and pound cakes of roughly the same height, shape, and interior texture; none of the cakes tasted or looked unacceptable. Despite differences in the color of the pans, most also browned the cakes sufficiently; only one pan made from a very light aluminum turned out cakes that were a tad pale. While this wasn't a deal breaker, we preferred pans that browned more deeply, which added a crunchier crust and more caramelized flavor.
We also preferred pans with feet—little pieces of metal that stick out from the top of the pan to support it when it's upside down. These feet allowed us to invert the pan onto a flat surface rather than try to balance it on a potentially tippy bottle for cooling. (However, the bottle trick works pretty well if you happen to have a pan without feet.) Finally, we liked the maneuverability of pans with handles, but we didn't think they were essential—all the pans were easy to hold, rotate, and flip.
Removable Bottom: Goo...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Durability: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cake Appearance: 3 stars out of 3.
This pan was the only one in our lineup that ultimately had every feature we loved: a nonstick surface, a removable bottom, and feet. Baking with this pan was easy from start to finish, and it turned out flawless angel food and pound cakes. Though it has a removable bottom, it didn't leak, even when we baked a heavier batter, our Tunnel of Fudge Cake. Though we'd be happy if it churned out only perfect angel food cakes, it's a versatile pan that can also be used to make pound cakes and Bundt cakes. Like many of these pans, it looked a bit scratched at the end of testing.
Recommended
- Durability: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cake Appearance: 3 stars out of 3.
Though this pan leaked when we made pound cake, it churned out tender, pristine angel food cakes. Its removable bottom and nonstick interior made removing cakes a breeze. It doesn't have feet, but the conical center tube is taller than the sides of the pan, so it can still stand on its own when inverted—no bottle required. We did notice minor cosmetic scratches on its surface at the end of testing.
Recommended with reservations
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Cake Appearance: 2 stars out of 3.
Testers were split on this pan's light-colored uncoated exterior: The resulting cakes were light and delicate but missing the caramelized, crisp exterior we prefer on our angel food and pound cakes. However, since it doesn't have a nonstick coating, this pan's finish was extra-durable—we couldn't find a scratch on the surface at the end of testing. The uncoated surface resulted in some sticking, but that was mitigated by the removable bottom, which allowed us to pick the cake right out of the pan (though it did take a swipe of a butter knife to get the cake off the base). It leaked a few teaspoons of batter when we made pound cake.
- Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Cake Appearance: 2 stars out of 3.
Pound cake was easy to bake and release in this nonstick, fixed-bottom pan. However, angel food cake baked in this pan looked a bit ragged since we had to scrape the edges with a knife and shake the pan to get the cake out. This meant that the pan emerged from testing with a fair number of scratches. Though it doesn't have feet, it fit easily over the neck of a wine bottle for cooling.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Cake Appearance: 1.5 stars out of 3.
This pan cleanly released a tall, tender pound cake with crisp edges. However, cooling and releasing angel food cake was a chore. The hole in the center of the pan was too small to fit a wine bottle or any other bottle that could support the weight of the pan and cake. We had to rest the pan on its handles for cooling, which limited airflow and caused the cake to steam, making the bottom a bit soggy. Since it's a fixed-bottom pan, it required both scraping and shaking to persuade the cake to fall out, and the resulting cake looked splotchy. We did like this pan's handles, which allowed for easy transportation to and from the oven.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
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