Sweet Kitchen Tips 4

As a avid baker, I have tons of baking pans, they are all different sizes and volumes, in most cases the manufacturers indication of size on them often are either totally illegible or nonexistent, leaving me with guest work when I’m trying to find the right pan.  Not good.  So, I have come up with a sure way to have them all nice and labeled.  Use oven safe metal paint (I found mine at the hardware store) to mark the bottom of each pan with the dimensions and/or capacity.  It will never fade and one quick look and you are all set.

How about when it’s time to bake those cookies and the recipe calls to line a baking sheet with parchment paper? Yeah, time to do the battle with the curly – unruly paper. Well, I put it on its place! Grab four refrigerator magnets and place one over each corner of the parchment.  Now the paper will stay in place while you scoop that cookie batter in place! (remember to remove the magnets before it goes into the oven!)

How about when you are trying to use the baking pan to pour bake batter? Obviously the magnets are not a good idea, so another way to keep the paper in place is to coat the baking sheet with a light coating of cooking spray making the parchment paper adhere to the sticky surface.  Now who is the boss?

And in the subject of coating pans…

Make your own all-in-one baker’s coating mix. Combine 2 parts shortening with 1 part flour and brush this paste lightly onto the cake pans when you need to coat the them for baking.  And the best part is that you can store any remaining mixture at room temperature in a plastic resalable container, so you’ll have the coating on hand when the need arises.