Silicone Bakeware

When I first saw silicone bakeware at David Jones over a year ago I couldn't help but be intrigued. With the prices starting at around $30 for a 6-muffin tray I couldn't really afford to be tempted at the time, but now silicone bakeware has even started appearing at Coles and Woolworths and the prices have fallen, so when Myer had a bunch of it on special a couple of weeks ago Gam and I bought a silicone tart dish. I'd already decided that a silicone cake or loaf tin would be a bad idea because its flexibility meant there was a distinct possibility of slopping cake batter over the side of the tray on the way to the oven. A bicuit tray was a possibility, but as we didn't have a dedicated tart dish and Gam wanted to give it a go with his pecan pie we got the tart dish.

According to Gam, putting the pastry into the dish for blind-baking was 'about the same' in terms of difficulty. After blind-baking the pastry crust he thought it needed more support because the flexibility of the dish meant there was a possibility of breaking the crust while carrying it from the oven. There was also potential for spilling the contents once the pastry had been filled, so he put the dish on a pizza tray for support. The best feature of the silicone tart tray was the ease with which the tart could be removed; usually we just cut it up and serve it from the dish in which it is baked, so it was nice to be able to remove the whole tart so easily.

Aside from the sheer novelty of silicone bakeware I must say that it doesn't hold a lot of appeal on practical terms, given that another silicone product -silicone-impregnated baking paper- already makes baking cakes and biscuits so goddamn easy. Armed with a regular bicuit tray, springform tin or regular square cake tin and a roll of the aforementioned baking paper there is no need to bother with greasing and flouring and gingerly easing the cake from the tin for fear of it sticking. For biscuits I just grab the edge of the paper and slide the whole batch, paper and all, onto a cooling rack. For cakes you can leave it to cool a little then grab the edges of the paper and lift the cake out of its tin and onto the cooling rack.

Original Source: http://todaysapatheticyouth.blogspot.com/2007/01/silicone-bakeware.html