"cookie sheet" news and stories

One of the most fun parts of cooking is when you hear a tip (or come up with one yourself) that makes the cooking easier. Adam at The Amateur Gourmet was dismayed recently when he discovered that he his friend Diana took her cookie sheets with her when she left, and he didn't have any like hers, that were flat and didn't have any sides to them. So he came up with this idea: use the back of the cookie sheet.

He puts parchment paper on the sheet and then uses an ice cream scoop for the cookie dough. He then flattens them a little bit with his wet hand and cooks them a little less than usual, which is something I've always done with my cookies too. He loved the results.

The LA Times conducted a test that pitted a silpat against parchment paper in a holiday cookie bakeoff. (I'm not going to get into the fact that the article also states that "traditionally, careful home bakers have used clarified butter when greasing is required," though I have yet to meet a home baker who "traditionally" has done this.) They concluded that, while both parchment paper and silpats performed better than "untreated" pan in terms of spread and even cooking, the silpat performed better than the parchment paper in two out of three trials.

This is not a very fair test for the simple reason that the two things, although they share some of the same functionality, are designed to do different things. Would you compare a fork and a spoon, both useful utensils, and declare the fork to be superior because it is more proficient at stabbing food with its prongs?

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