Cooking with Silicone Bakeware

Thanks to cosmetic surgery, colorful, flexible bake ware may not be the first thing you think of when you hear or see the word ‘silicone.’ Yet food-grade silicone is rapidly finding a place on all of our kitchen shelves.

First there was the roll-up nonstick baking mat which is great for pie crusts and rolling cookie dough and fondant on, followed by spatulas ( no more glued on sticky messes!), whisks and other little accessories. Now, there’s a whole range of eye-pleasing, brightly colored pans for baking muffins, various shaped cakes and breads and you can purchase them to fit any kitchens decor or theme. There’s even a silicone rolling pin to complete the nonstick, silicone bake ware experience. So what’s the big deal? 

For my young children, the color’s the big thing, and how “feely,” or tactile, it is. For grown-ups, its inherent nonstick qualities combined with its flexibility and the easy clean up process are the key to our cooking hearts. The promise of being able to peel out a cake, or have your muffins slip out without being coaxed by a knife, is appealing to say the least. Theoretically, you can do away with greasing and flouring (although some makers of the silicone bake ware suggest you still do so if the recipe requires it), making it an ideal tool for low fat baking.Now we have no excuse on stiffing our diet again I guess that is one of the silicone bake ware downfalls.

The pans are undoubtedly versatile. They can be rolled up for storage and are absolutely wonderful if you don't have a whole lot of storage available in your kitchen, and twisted and misshapen any number of ways (though why you would want to beats me!). The pans can be used in the freezer, the microwave or the oven, try sticking that dark metal pan in your microwave and tell me what happens, I am sure it won't be pretty. Another added on bonus I am sure all you ladies out there will love is that silicone bake ware are generally dishwasher-safe. Silicone bake ware is non-porous so it doesn’t retain odors or flavors you don't have to worry any long about tasting last weeks chocolate cupcake in this weeks corn muffin. It takes only a minute or two to cool down after use and you can pick it up with out being burned or surprised by the heat, and because of its nonstick qualities, clean-up is a breeze as I had mentioned above.

Silicone seems to distribute heat evenly, but as with dark metal pans or regular nonstick tins, cakes baked in silicone pans may require less time in the oven so when using silicone bake ware it is best to watch it yourself instead of following a cooking time indicated by a recipe. Despite withstanding a wide range of temperatures, not all pans can withstand the highest heats. Some claim to work up to 500 degrees, others set an upper limit of 428 degrees, which could rule out some of your favorite muffin recipes.So don't throw away all your metal pans but most of them you can live without
Finally, because the pans are flexible they should be handled with care. It is best to place them on a tray or cookie sheet before filling them and taking them to the oven or freezer. Taking a filled muffin pan to the oven without doing so would be challenging to say the least.
So whether silicone bake ware is ideal for all our baking needs remains to be seen, but there seem to be enough good reasons to add a splash of color to our kitchens and be rid of those rusty old cake tins.