I am a big fan of my Baker's Edge pan and use it just about every time that I bake bar cookies or other treats I might ordinarily use a rectangular pan for, including brownies and cheesecake bars. The pan's unique design allows for more even cooking and a higher crust-to-center ratio for baked goods. Cooking for Engineers set out to scientifically test the pan in a side-by-side bake off with a 9"x13" rectangular pan. Their goal was to test the evenness of the cooking, as compared with the standard pan, and to see how the crustier batch appealed to tasters.

The Baker's Edge cooked very evenly and produced pieces with appealingly chewy edges (unlike the hard edges that can result in regular pans), but the brownies weren't quite as popular with center-piece lovers as the brownies from the larger, more traditional pan. A few batches later and C for E found that a slightly shorter baking time made the whole batch of Baker's Edge brownies just like center-pieces.

Their overall verdict was that the pan worked extremely well, with the only real drawback being that it was difficult to get out the first piece. Of course, as the chef, having a sample piece for yourself isn't such a bad thing, is it?

The pans are only $13 each, so you may not want to run out and replace some of your more expensive cookware, but they're certainly appealing to the eye and I can see them working well as a much-used piece of equipment in a college apartment.

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.

Gingerbread men are a bit of a hassle to bake. Mixing up the dough is not the problem and neither is decorating the cooled cookies or eating them. They annoying thing about the cookies is that the dough has to be chilled, rolled out, cut and rerolled before the cookies can even be baked. It is time consuming and, when you consider that you could have made at least a batch or two of chocolate chip cookies in the mean time, it doesn't always seem worth the effort. But there is no denying that the cookies are cute. Fortunately, Wilton makes a gingerbread man pan that can be used to bake little cakes, muffins, brownies and even mold rice crispy treats into gingerbread men. It is much faster than working with the cut-out cookies and you can still have fun decorating them. One additional bonus is that the cake pan gives you an easy alternative to cookies when the holidays tend to be cookie-heavy as far as desserts go.

Many of us only use a large roasting pan a few times a year and even though the meals we are using it for are holiday dinners, where to is important to try to get the food as perfectly cooked as possible, it is hard to justify spending $200+ dollars on a pan that gets so little use. Cook's Country tested some inexpensive roasting pans, all under $100, to see if they would do just as good a job as the more expensive pans while staying in our budgets.

Each of the pans they tested was designed to work both on the stove-top, so they could be used to brown meats, and in the oven or under the broiler. They chose pans with a minimum size of 15" x 11" inches, to accommodate largest turkeys. Overall, they strongly preferred pans that had sturdy, upright handles, which were easy to grip and did not interfere with the way the pan fit into the oven by adding an extra 2-3 inches to the length. They also found that stainless steel pans with aluminum cores offered the best heat distribution, while plain stainless steel could be a bit spotty when it came to browning. Their top picks were:

• CALPHALON Contemporary Stainless Steel Roasting Pan ($100)
• CUISINART Chef's Classic Roasting Pan ($80)
• KITCHENAID Gourmet Distinctions Roasting Pan ($50) - Best Buy
• GRANITE WARE Oval Roasting Pan ($22) - Best Buy for very infrequent roasters

Do you have a specialty pan at home? It could be something as simple as a specialized bundt cake mold or a bit more unusual, such as an aebleskiver pan. These pans all have fairly limited uses, but if you use them often enough, it's worth the extra cabinet space to save time in the long run.

Some pans, however, might take the specialty concept a bit too far. The Jesus pan might be a good example, except you can still use it for many different kinds of food. This pepper griddle, on the other hand, is made from cast-iron and has eight pepper-shaped indentations that are "recessed to evenly blister the Jalapeno pepper halves." It can be used to make stuffed peppers, and little else.

Stuffed peppers are good, but do you really need a pan dedicated to making them? If so, they're only $15.95 each.

There are a lot of cooks that will tell you all you really need is some good nonstick cookware in your kitchen. There are an equal number who will tell you that all you need is a cast iron pan. Cast iron heats evenly, quickly and lasts nearly forever. The pans can go from the stovetop right into the oven and, once it is seasoned, the pan should be fairly stick-resistant, too. They're all-purpose pans, to say the least. Cast Iron Cooking is a book that is dedicated to the cookware, with fifty recipes that will all be at their peak when prepared in cast iron.

Frankly, this book is a great resource for people who regularly use cast iron, or want to use it more, since so many current cookbooks call for nonstick pans and confusion can occasionally arise over what is the best cookware to use. The book starts out with some basic introductions to those unfamiliar with the material, including a section explaining how they can be used for open-flame cooking outdoors. The recipes range from main dishes to desserts, and once you develop a relationship with your pan, dutch oven, etc., you'll find yourself using it for a lot more.

It is a relatively simple matter to grease and flour a cake pan. Jus spray it with cooking spray (rub with butter), sprinkle some flour on top, turning the pan to coat it evenly, and you're ready to go. Lining a cake pan with parchment paper can pose a problem for some, especially if you try to draw a circle out on the paper and ever-so-carefully cut around it because it is easy to screw up, not to mention that it is tedious work. Fortunately, there is a simple way to get a piece of paper to fit exactly inside of the circular pan. It's as easy as following the photos above and will take no longer than reading this post:

1. Take a piece of parchment paper larger than your pan and fold it into quarters. Fold that piece in half, then in half again until it is quite slim.
2. Place the point of the paper in the center of the upside down pan.
3. Use scissors to cut a straight line just inside the outer edge of the pan.
4. Unfold and place in pan, if necessary, fold back up and trim a corner to make it fit better.

One of the fun things about bundt pans is that they come in so many different shapes - far more than an ordinary cake pan. The problem with this is that you can end up with too many pans, some of which are only really appropriate for certain occasions and the Holiday Tree bundt is a prime example of this. The Stadium Pan does not have this problem, even though it does have an undeniably unique shape, since there are sporting events running all year long. All you need to do is make sure the icing colors match the team that you're supporting before the match, and you can root for your favorite team while you and your friends chow down.

The way that Williams-Sonoma includes a picture of the finished cake with most of their bakeware is a nice touch, especially for the shaped pans. Seeing a lovely, frosted treat is obviously more appealing than simply looking at a piece of metal. For instance, I was not particularly impressed when I saw this Ice Cream Cone Cupcake Pan, a Williams-Sonoma exclusive, on its own, but once I saw the finished cakes in their catalogue, I was sold. They look fantastic, and are a great twist on a regular cupcake, reminding me of a different kind of cupcake cone without the crunchy shell. I think it's particularly impressive that they were able to proportion the cakes so they can stand on their own. The pan is a summer special, so check them out now, if you're interested.

The first two things that I wanted to test in my new Baker's Edge pan were brownies and cheesecake because they are both dishes that can be very difficult to get a correct baking time for. It seems that the center always takes much, much longer to cook than the edges do, resulting in a very uneven, unpredictable final product. In the best cases, this is annoying, while in the worst, the whole batch has to be thrown away. The Baker's Edge is designed to eliminate the problem of having an under-cooked center and over cooked edges.

Another potential problem with the RFID pan is that someone could hack it to burn your shrimp. Think about it--just go around the city with a powerful RFID transmitter and burn everyone's meal!