"bakeware" news and stories

Are your cakes and muffins not browning evenly and you've even calibrated your oven? It could be your bakeware.

Even though I don't particularly care for silicone bakeware and baking tests haven't shown it to be an improvement over traditional bakeware, I will give it points for coming in such a wide variety of shapes. Silicone can easily be molded into just about any shape you can think of and bakeware manufacturers seem to enjoy using it for some of the more unusual designs that they come up with. Its flexibility means that, unlike with traditional bakeware, it is very easy to pop finished cakes and candies out of their molds without worrying about getting pieces of the cake stuck to the pan. The Hearts, X's & O's pan is made of silicone and bakes 16 mini muffin-sized cakes (the pan is only 8.25-in square) that are ideal for Valentine's Day: five X's, five O's and six hearts. It is easily worth a look just for the sheer cuteness of the finished cakes.

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The traditional cakes of Christmas are yule logs and fruitcakes, but that doesn't mean that holiday options have to be limited to those traditionally festive few cakes. Nordicware has a new Christmas Tree pan that bakes up into a three-dimensional tree that is cute enough to rival any holiday display and is likely to elicit some "oohs" and "aahs" when you bring it out to the table. While it's true that all cakes are really three-dimensional, this one is unique in that it actually stands up, rather than lying flat on the table. The cake is baked in two halves, which are cemented together with a layer of frosting before being set up on a cake plate, where it will reach a final height of about 10 inches. The cake pan holds 9 cups of batter, which is about the size of a traditional bundt cake recipe. Once the tree is up, it can be decorated with frosting, candy ornaments or just a light dusting of powdered sugar to simulate snow. If you're feeling brave, you could spike the batter with green food coloring for a really tree-like cake, although it might take some convincing to get people to eat it.

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As I have mentioned in the past, I don't really care for silicone bakeware. While it allows cakes and other baked goods to cook evenly, it doesn't produce any of the browning or caramelisation at the edges that I love to see. That being said, I do own several silicone cake pans, collected after trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. . I would give them away to a friend or someone who might actually get some use out of the nearly-new pans, but they seem to have become sticky to the point of unusability - and I have no idea why, nor does there seem to be much information about the issue online. Have any of you readers had the same problem? The pans are all dishwasher safe and the instructions say that they cab be soaked in warm, soapy water to clean them, as well. If I'm the only one, then clearly my pans are even worse than I originally thought. If I'm not, then I definitely recommend sticking with more traditional, easier to clean bakeware.

If you haven't already seen your local market transform into a haunted castle and pumpkins falling all over themselves in giant displays, well, you must not be living in the US. Halloween is upon us, and technically, it's still September.

Nonetheless, I fell in love with these adorable pumpkin-shaped cakes, which are turned out of a mini pumpkin pan from Williams-Sonoma, and had a burning desire to bake pumpkin bread this instant. Whatever cake or bread batter you put in there comes out looking like the top (or bottom) half of a pumpkin. You can decorate and serve just the halves, or put two together to make a whole pumpkin.

However, I did realize, of course, that if you were to buy this pan just to make mini pumpkins, that would be a waste of $32. Why not get the mini brownie bundt pan instead and use it every season? They are the exact same product.

Oh, those tricky product marketers at Williams-Sonoma! They almost had us!