h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My banana muffins are welded to my tray.

Consider it extra fibre?

Eat them with a spoon?

Gosh, that's annoying. Maybe you can use cupcake papers or parchment paper or wax paper next time.

Bet I could figure a way to get them out

I get increasingly annoyed with baking trays, muffin trays, cupcake trays, bread tins, hmmm... basically any kitchen metal stuff, its all* non-stick, or rubbish, if its designed for 'domestic' use... yet I know people who work in commercial they don't seem to have this 'non stick' stuff forced on them, instead they can buy decent stuff, that you 'wear in', and which then doesn't stick, and can* be cleaned properly

Its so annoying though... you've spent ages making something... its probably come out really* well.... and there is no way that loaf of bread, baguette, cupcake, or whatever is going to leave the tin, withhout having to either wreck the tin, wreck the baked item, or, as useually seems to happen, both

Price, or brand name of the baking tray/sheet/whatever doesn't always work as a guide either, to say what will, and what won't work...
*looks guiltily at pile of hundreds of quids worth of various baking trays, breadtins, b baguette tin, baking sheets, cupcake tins,

It was my fault, to be honest, I greased the tin with butter as usual but didn't run my finger around the cups to make sure it was evenly coated.

Plus, after I posted this I went back to them and discovered that the rest of them came out with only a bit extra effort.

I am a huge convert to silicon bakeware, to the extent that Mrs Zen has gradually been replacing my bakeware with brightly coloured silion. It just falls away beautifully.

I guess I iz too old school for silicon bakeware, as yet... Mind, my best bread tin (the one I hunted round for ages and ages to find one that* size (big)), was one of the more expensive bits of bakeware I bought...

Butter I find (certianly with bread anyhow), produces variable results (this is basically all on various non-stick things), I've gotten into the habbit of using the 'low calory' 'oil sprays', which seem to work best, partly I think because you spray them on, it gets a more even coating as well as only actually being a very small amount of oil, that doesn't affect the taste/otter appearance of what is being baked; I've used both the sunflower and olive oil ones and both seem to work as well as each other

I do look at commercial bakeware, when it appears (particulalry on EBay), but sadly most of it is too large for my tiny domestic oven Mind... I'd love to buy those proper* full sized baguette trays, even though they're megga-expensive.... but I'd need an oven at least twice as wide (and yes, I have been investigating the idea of buying a commercial two deck bakery oven, but it would mean loosing all my worktop in the kitchen, or having to convert my front room into the kitchen....)

I may have to give the silicon stuff a try, next time I need soemthing new... I was thinking of getting a silicon 'mat', or parchment thing, I saw, to use to line one of my heavier (and quite expensive), non-stick (well used to be), baking trays... Think it was called a 'cooky tray' or soemthing but it was the right size for doing rolls on in a decent batch hmmm.... I might be in M&S or Wobbert Sawles (OK, John Lewis, if you insist), later, I could have a quick look round the baking silicon stuff, to try and prevent me from spending too much on new underwear

This isn't a very helpful suggestion for muffin tins, but I reckon one of the most useful piece of equipment in my kitchen is baking parchment. I put it on my flat tins whenever I bake a bloomer and I line my cake tins and loaf tins with it, plus it's reusable. I can get at least a dozen uses out of each piece, often more for flatter ones.

Why hadn't I tought of that? I even bought a box of the stuff, a while back, and used it, when making quiche, to line the quiche tin... err, no it was to put on top of the pastry, when blind baking the base before adding the filling... but the same logic applies may have to give that a go... the flat trays, when I'm doing rolls and pitta etc., never seen to need any oiling or have much trubble releasing, its only the baguette trays (which I can't line beacuse of the holes they've got in them to let steam through and give the baguette that sort of texture on the bottom) might be a sensible thing for using in the bread tins though <d

It's perfect for bread tins and cake tins when you have a really sticky batter or anything with a lot of protein (like eggs) in the recipe.