Springform and tube pans

What we can tell you here

Our ledger contains audited sheet, cake, loaf and oblong bakeware. It does not contain a separately audited springform or tube pan, because we only list products whose specifications we have read from the manufacturer - the method is here. So this page explains the shapes and the physics, and points at tagged searches for the pans rather than inventing spec sheets.

Springform pans: the release problem

Most cakes come out of a pan by being turned upside down. A cheesecake cannot: it is dense, wet, fragile and often has a loose crumb base. Inverting it destroys it.

A springform solves that by making the wall removable. A hinged or clamped ring sits around a flat base plate; release the clamp and the ring expands away from the cake, leaving it standing on the base.

What it is genuinely needed for

• Cheesecake - the archetypal case, and the reason most people own one.
• Deep set desserts - mousse cakes, ice cream cakes, anything chilled and set rather than baked.
• Layered no-bake desserts assembled in the pan.
• Tall, delicate baked cakes where inverting risks collapse.

The problem it introduces

The seam between the ring and the base is a joint, and joints leak. Melted butter from a crumb base is thin enough to find any gap, and a wet batter will too. That produces three familiar outcomes: a burnt smell, a smoking oven and a cheesecake with no butter left in its base.

1. Always put it on a sheet pan. This is not optional and it catches everything.
2. Wrap the outside in foil if you are using a water bath, in two layers, up the sides. A single layer usually fails.
3. Line the base with parchment before clamping the ring on, and let the excess stick out - it also makes the cake easier to move.
4. Check the seal by clamping the empty pan and running a hand around the joint. A pan that does not close flush will leak.

Leakage is the reason some bakers prefer a solid pan with a parchment sling for anything that can survive being lifted, and use the springform only for cheesecake. That is a reasonable position - the sling technique is in how to stop baked goods sticking.

Tube pans: the heat problem

A tube pan has a hollow column through the middle. It is not decorative - it is a conduction fix.

A deep round cake has a problem: heat reaches the outside from all around and reaches the center only by travelling through several inches of batter, which is a poor conductor. The outside sets and browns long before the middle is done. Adding a metal column through the center gives heat a second route in, so the middle cooks at roughly the same rate as the edge.

The problem tube pans introduce

Release. A fluted bundt pan has dozens of crevices, and every one of them is somewhere batter can weld itself. This is the shape where greasing badly is most punished, because a cake that sticks in a bundt breaks in a way that cannot be hidden.

1. Use softened butter or shortening applied with a brush, not melted butter, which pools at the base and leaves the upper flutes bare.
2. Get into every crevice, then flour it and knock out the excess. Cocoa instead of flour for chocolate cakes.
3. Do not use aerosol spray in a bundt. It pools in the detail and burns on, building the sticky residue described in how to clean nonstick pans.
4. Turn it out after about ten minutes. Too early and it tears; too late and it cools, contracts and glues itself in.

Materials for both shapes

• Bare or anodized aluminum browns best and has nothing to wear out. It needs proper greasing and flouring every time - the approach behind uncoated cake pans.
• Aluminized steel with a published coating is the practical choice for a fluted bundt, where the release problem is worst. USA Pan's coating is published free of PTFE, PFOA and BPA.
• Dark coated steel browns fast; drop the oven by about 25F or the outside of a deep cake sets too early.
• Silicone releases beautifully and browns nothing, which for a bundt means a pale, soft cake with no crust - is silicone bakeware safe.
• Glass and ceramic exist in these shapes and conduct poorly, which defeats the point of the tube - stoneware and ceramic bakeware.

Sizes

The fill rule and substitution arithmetic are the same as everywhere else in baking and are set out in what size cake pan.

When you do not need either

Both of these are single-purpose pans, and single-purpose pans are the ones that end up unused at the back of a cupboard - a real cost in a small kitchen.

• If you never make cheesecake, you do not need a springform. A parchment sling in a solid pan handles most other cakes.
• If you never make bundt or angel food cakes, a tube pan will not get used. A loaf pan or two round pans cover ordinary cakes.
• If you bake twice a year, buy neither and use the pans you have.

The general case against buying shapes you will not use is made in what bakeware you actually need.

Care

1. Hand wash both. Springform hinges trap water and rust, and coated tube pans should not go in a dishwasher.
2. Dry the springform mechanism thoroughly, including the clamp, which is where corrosion starts.
3. Never scrape a fluted pan with metal. A wooden skewer gets baked-on batter out of a crevice without scoring anything.
4. Store the springform assembled, or you will lose the base.

Full material-by-material care is in bakeware care and cleaning.

9-inch springform pans on Amazon and bundt pans cover the two shapes this page describes.