Not necessarily; some things, such as caramel, don't work for any ingredient amounts other than the exact ones specified in the recipe.

The ratio of ingredients is one of the key factors in baking. The other is the ration between the surface area and the volume of the item being baked. There are other factors as well, such as whether the ingredients should be thoroughly mixed or just lightly combined, or how thoroughly you should beat substances like egg (which alters it's protein structure).

It is relevant. The post you were quoting was rebutting the statement that if you just keep the ratio the same, the taste will be the same. This is not true. If you double the ingredients of a cake recipe, keep the ratio intact, and then attempt to bake it, you will not end up with a cake that tastes like the original recipe.

I'm assuming you're not stupid enough to fail to grasp that I was making an example, yes?

Cooking a rump roast is not what one would generally consider to be baking.

You live in America, land of the fat, where anything that can be oversized is. Yet do you ever wonder why you don't see cupcakes or donuts a foot in diameter?

Well, if someone decides to double the ingredients for a cake, throw it all in a pan twice as large as the original recipe calls for, and expects it to come out the same, then that person shouldn't be cooking in the first place.

This thread is about various ways of measuring ingredients. It isn't about The Fine Art of Baking 101. I'm not even sure how we got onto the subject of baking in particular.

No one is arguing that.

If a recipe calls for one cup of flour and three cups of water, and you want to make twice as much of whatever the recipe is for, then you would use two cups of flour and six cups of water. Relatively, you are using one third the amount of flour as you are water.

No one said that you should then go on to make the final product twice as big. I realize that won't work. All that was said was that the ratio between how much of each ingredient you use needs to remain the same.

To take it to excess, you should argue that you should use the standard "two cup" measuring cup.

And I just now noticed this:

Rather like sculpting a hippopotamus by getting a big chunk of marble, and chiseling off whatever doesn't look like a hippopotamus?

For the last time: It was a fucking example!

Your original statement implied that is was only the ratio that mattered. If this wasn't what you meant, then you expressed yourself poorly.

Not always true. You actually can bake a double sized cake. But you don't keep the ratio the same. You increase the ammount of ingredients that when heated together create carbon dioxide. This produces more gas in the cake which allows you to bake it to a greater size. The other ingredients stay at the same values. So, the ratios are not preserved.

Why would you want a double sized cake with same amount of sugar and cocoa powder. A single piece of cake would have only half of the taste.

That said, I do believe you can't always double everything in the recipe.

The thread had already gone of-topic by then.

I disagree. It was a perfect example of the fact that ratio of ingredients is not the only factor in baking.

If done correctly, yes. There are a few other tricks that bakers use as well, such as increasing the ammount of liquid that goes into oversized baking. This is to allow for drying out that occurs because the items need to be in the oven longer.

Well, yes, you would probably increase those ammounts as well, but not doubled, as the larger cake will be double the size, but not double the mass, as some of the size increase is due to more gas pockets.