Oh my word. I have just learned the most spectacular trick for baking. Ever. This is not hyperbole. OK, maybe a little bit. To call it “life-changing” is an understatement. Actually, it’s pretty literal. Anyway.
I follow a bunch of the Great British Bake Off contestants on Instagram. One former winner, Nancy Britwhistle, kept using something she called “lining paste” in her pans. I dug deeper and found a recipe and my life is forever changed and I am about to change your lives as well and thank you and you’re welcome.
As bakers, there are a few common disasters that find their ways into our kitchens. Sunken cakes. Over/under proofed dough. Dry cupcakes. Bland bread. Cookies that spread like puddles. But one of the worst things is when you meticulously grease or grease AND flour your pans for your cake/bread/muffins/tarts/brownies and part of it decides to stick and break off your bake. You slap the broken part back on, cover it with some frosting and hope for the best. But friends – I am about to introduce you to something that will free you from the torment of stuck-to-the-pan cakes.
LINING PASTE.
Let me tell you about this miraculous discovery.
The arctic blast is making its way into town, and I love me a cold front. So as any normal person with multiple loads of laundry to fold, garden seedlings to cover up with blankets, and dinner to make would do, I decided to bake an apple bundt cake. I’d just gotten some organic granny smith apples on sale today, and I’d made apple bread over the weekend that everyone said tasted like fall. I love fall! Also, bundt cakes are notorious for being difficult to remove, so I wanted to test out the lining paste.
But TA DA!!!
DID YOU SEE THAT?!? No effort, no sticking. That bundt cake slipped right out! Amazeballs. It would look super pretty with a glaze poured on in a lovely symmetrical drippy pattern, but then it would be dessert and inappropriate for feeding my children as breakfast food in the morning. Everyone knows that rule, too, right? Frosting = dessert. No frosting = perfectly acceptable breakfast pastry.
How does one make this miraculous paste, you ask? Here is the recipe. It’s hard, so brace yourselves.
Sidenote: I keep my flour in a wide mouth bucket with snap-on lid. So much easier to access than the bag it comes in or a container with a spout. I use my flour nearly daily. Also, the chopstick is in the bucket permanently. I use it to level off the cups when I’m measuring out flour.
I’m a little bit ridiculously excited about this discovery. I have some tricky silicone molds I’ve had bad luck with, and I think I need to bake more stuff this week to try this paste on it. God bless you, Nancy Britwhistle. (Follow her on Instagram. She is hilarious, teaches all kinds of super useful tips, and is really into earth friendly cleaning and baking!)
Hope this helps you, too! Have any super useful tips? Let me know! Happy fall baking season!
1) I love your blogging style. That’s why I read it all. Keep it up.
2) I actually going to try this. I hate using my silicone cupcake molds for actually baking because they’re impossible to wash. The baked goods get into the crevices so well it’s annoying.
3) I wish I lived closer to you so that I could pop by and beg for baked goods.
I will give you some of this paste. Just half a cup of each ingredient made a ton of lining paste. I’ve only used about a tablespoon for 3 different bakes now! And come over anytime. There are baked goods here daily.