Out of love with silicon for baking
posted on 19 Mar 2007 by maki ::
16 comments
Some years ago, when silicon baking wares came out, I jumped on them with glee. No more scraping off baked on crud from the baking sheets! Muffins that popped right up with no greasing of the cups required! Easy washing up!
But these days I’ve definitely fallen out of love with silicon sheets and silicon muffin pans and the like.
About those muffin pans first: while muffins do brown on the outsides, they don’t get as crispy-brown as I’d like. They also seem to rise a bit less than I’d like.
Also, they are totallly useless for popovers and Yorkshire puddings. You can’t really heat them up, so you can’t make them piping hot and pour in hot batter. The alternative method for making popovers ‘pop’ is to start them in a cold oven, but that doesn’t work either. So I end up with flat, boring muffins of a sort, rather than high and airy pockets of trapped air and eggy, moist insides. Yes, I know I could just get separate pans for the popover and Yorkshire puddings, but I don’t have that much storage space in my not-too-large kitchen, and I like to avoid ‘single-use’ type equipment as much as possible.
As for silicon baking sheets, used to line heavy baking sheets, they do okay on the browning front. But what I dislike about them is that, after a few uses they take on an unpleasantly ‘greasy’ feel to them. No amount of washing or soaking in soapy water seems to cure that. I don’t know if I’m over-sensitive to this, but it drives me nuts. So I end up throwing them out over maybe 3 uses. This doesn’t seem too economicalor environmentally friendly to me. (Do those things disintegrate at all in landfills?)
So, I’m back to good old metal baking tins and lining my baking sheets with kitchen parchment paper. My old metal muffin pans tend to stick a bit on the bottoms, so for delicate cupcakes and such I just use paper cupcake liners. (Which means of course I avoid those individual silicon cupcake cups.) Paper, at least, does disintegrate after a while.
How do you feel about those silicon baking products? Do you love them or hate them?
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silicon good for some purposes ... not for others
hullo maki!
i agree with your assessment of silicon muffin pans. unlike the metal ones, you can’t make popovers or yorkshire puddings, but they’re not bad at all for muffins or cupcakes.
with regards to the silicon sheets, i also have encountered its greasy feel after i wash it once. however, it usually goes away after i wash it with soap and water for a second time. i have used my silicon sheet many times and i think it’s very useful to keep baked goods from sticking. i have made cookies and pretzels on it and it works very well. my silicon sheet is from silpat. do you think the one you bought might have been defective?
I’ve only used the cake
I’ve only used the cake tins and muffin pans, but so far I haven’t been overly impressed. I miss the crispy bottoms and they’re just not that much easier to clean. I’d rather spend 2 minutes greasing the pan or use paper pans.
silicon products
Maria, I’ve used Silipat, and several other brand/no brand sheets, and that greasy feeling gets worse for me with repeat use…so I ended up just using them about 3-4 time max, then dumping them. Which didn’t seem to be too economical. Maybe I am too sensitive to the ‘greasy’ feeling somehow…
anon I agree with you - it’s not such a big deal in any case to do a little greasing of the pans (and it’s not like it’s a huge amount of grease anyway…besides it’s baking something that already has plenty of fat in it, usually)
silicone
you can run those silicone mats through the dishwasher…no need to toss ‘em!
my dishwasher is non-mechanized...
We actually don’t own a dishwasher… (except for the human kind… :o … we have this ongoing mild debate at how ecological they are or something)
(Not that we are overly green I don’t think … though we don’t have a clothes dryer either… and we use geothermal energy to heat the house.. hmm… well all this is not that uncommon in Switzerland )
We’ve tried soaking them in very hot soapy water … probably a dishwasher would do a better job….
silicon pans
I just bought a snowman cake pan and it had no directions at all! I wondered if I’m supposed to grease and oil the pan like a regular cake pan. I tried it out for the first time last night. The cake was a little brown and crispy on the bottom, but it looked cool because the face details (carrot nose and pieces of coal for eyes and mouth) really stood out.
you shouldn't have to
You shouldn’t have to grease and oil a silicon pan…you can of course if you want to be extra safe. (I’m talking about a floppy, all-silicon pan vs. a silicon-coated metal pan. Those I do grease a bit for ensure things won’t stick.)
I’ve made my first
I’ve made my first cupcakes with silicon muffin tins but most of the cup cake stayed in the tin. It was impossible to get the whole cupcake out in one piece. Isn’t it supposed to be non stick? Am I doing something wrong?
that sounds odd
Indeed, silicon is very non-stick… are you talking about the silicon-coated metal muffin tins perhaps? The coating can wear off them sometimes. It’s safer to grease them lightly I think. (I was talking about all-silicon sort of rubbery muffin molds actually in this post.)
Re: Out of love with silicon for baking
I am finding that the silicone bakeware seems to always get hotter and cook faster than the regular times in metal cookware -- and I'm baking everything on a lower temperature to begin with -- I find I have to really watch things closely or they burn.
no love for silicon
I didn't like them from the very beginning. They burnt my earl grey tea muffin because things cook faster in them (I didn't know what to expect), not to mention that some bits of muffin got stuck in the grooves and are impossible to remove. They are okay as little side dish dividers in lunch box.
Re: Out of love with silicon for baking
I haven't used silicon yet. I have a six-cup muffin tray that someone gave me but I don't know what the benefits (and pitfalls) of using silicon are. I'm thinking of sticking to my usual tins, unless I can be convinced otherwise. Apart from possibly allowing more even heating, and non-sticking, what are the other perceived benefits?
better uses for silicon
I couldn't agree more. Silicon muffin cups produce drier muffins without a nice crust, and are a pain to clean; and I much prefer parchment to silpat sheets. The baking sheet liners do seem to get incurably greasy. (Add that to two large, long-haired dogs, and ... well, you get the picture.) BUT -- I'm not dumping my silicone yet, because it is GREAT for some other things.
1. I use my silicone muffin cups as dividers in my bento lunches. Perfect.
2. The smooth-sided muffin cups are wonderful portable, unbreakable individual custard cups for my older son's yearly pumpkin custard birthday treats (his birthday is right around American Thanksgiving, and for some reason he has always preferred to have custard in class instead of the usual cupcakes).
3. Muffin cups great as prep dishes when I'm cooking Indian or Chinese (or anything else that requires mise-en-place).
4. The baking sheet liners, cut down to fit in cake pans, make a super-easy alternative to parchment when baking multi-layer cakes.
Re: Out of love with silicon for baking
We purchased silicon cupcake cups that have the little pleats like the paper and metal ones. They are impossible to clean AND if not throughly cleaned go rancid. Can't cook anything in them because of the smell.We didn't butter them, it was the oils in the muffin mix.I was on here hoping someone had devised a way to clean the oils out. Scrubbing with dishsoap hasn't worked and is, in general, annoying.
However, we do enjoy our Silpat
Re: Out of love with silicon for baking
It seems that some silicon bakeware gives off a very strong odor, somewhat smelling like soap, perfume or something of the like. I have a silicone muffin pan; I use cupcake liners whenever baking cupcakes and my cupcakes come out tasting with that odor! Anyone knows the reason for this?
Silpats are great. Used them in a professional kitchen for about 4 1/2 years, they do get a greasy feeling to it, and with time, they do not smell very good after each use.
Re: Out of love with silicon for baking
I was given a set of 6 silicon cakeware (round, square, loaf, 2x6 Muffin, quiche). And my intial excitement soon faded. The instructions said that I didn't need to grease them, but my brownies stuck to the bottom, just like if I hadn't greased a metal tin. Then no matter how much I washed them, they all developed this white stuff. The set cost over $250, so it is a pretty good brand. Down with silicon. I'm back to my aluminium tins with their nice even cooking.
I have had a Silpat mat for a few years and use it 3-4 times a week. It hasn't got a greasy feel to it. And I would be lost with out it. Maybe you could try http://www.magiccookingsheet.com.au. I know a few people who use this and love it.
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