Cake – Determining Bundt pan size when recipe gives a loaf tin size

Yes, but not the time so much. The dish itself is not a good conductor of heat, like cast iron or other metal for example. And it allows radiant heat directly on what is being cooked. One thing I do is that I have a pizza stone in my oven that helps keep the oven temperature stable.

Another thing that is very common is that oven temperatures are notoriously inaccurate. So, it pays to use an oven thermometer in order to get accurate oven temps (instead of going by the oven temperature dial).

Here's another tip. Place a cookie sheet on the rack below the glass/pyrex baking dish. This keeps the radiant heat from the lower element from directly heating the dish.

I must say though, that the #1 thing that has improved my baking is the oven thermometer. The oven dial in my kitchen is off from 15 to 25 degrees. This is a tip I got from "On Food and Cooking" by Harold McGee. The second thing is the pizza stone that helps regulate the temperature. A standard oven cycles on and off to maintain the temperature.

All that being said, I'd use metal cookware for cake. But I do get good results when I wind up using glassware by controlling the oven temps.

Update I made brownies last night and noticed in Marion Cunningham's (The Fannie Farmer Cookbook) recipe this advice, "If you're using a Pyrex dish, place it on a baking sheet during baking". What that does is to act as a buffer between the heating elements and the dish.

The best substitution would be a a simple tube pan.

Besides the unique appearance, bundt and tube pans are used for particularly dense and moist batters. They might be used for a cake that might dry out on the outside before the center cooks through.

If you don't have a tube pan, then there are a couple alternatives. You can use two loaf pans, this should approximate the bundt pan. Another alternative is to use a deep circular cake pan with a ceramic ramekin in the center of it to create the hole. With either method you may need to adjust your cook time a bit depending on your results. (likely 25F lower and baked for a little longer) It also might simply just work without changes.