How to Properly Grease Pans for Baking

After taking the time to bake a product from scratch, do you ever struggle to extract it out of the tin? Once you do manage to release your product from the tin, are you left with an unattractive and nasty white paste glued onto your product? If you take just a few simple steps to properly prepare your baking tins, you will be guaranteed your products will release easily and look professional.

What you will need: melted clarified butter pastry brush baking tin bread flour

1. Brush a thin layer of melted clarified butter onto your baking tin.
2. Place the tin in the fridge or freezer.
3. Once the fat has solidified, remove the tin and dust with bread flour. Shake the tin to ensure the entire surface is covered. Bang out the excess flour.
4. Immediately fill the tin with your recipe and place it in the oven for baking.

When preparing tins in this fashion you are essentially creating two separate layers. The flour will adhere to your baked good and the clarified butter will remain on the surface of your tin allowing for easy release. By not using clarified butter, the water present in regular butter will mix with the flour and create a gluey paste. The primary reason for dusting with bread flour is to avoid caking. Bread flour doesn't clump and will leave a very thin, even coating atop the solidified butter.


You will reap great rewards by taking these few extra steps.

Tagged as: [ baking basics butter clarified flour greasing howto pans pastry techniques tips ]

How to Make Your Own Butter

Making your own butter is easy. All you need to do is take heavy cream and whip it on high speed until the water separates from the fat. Once it has separated, strain and squeeze out all of the liquid. You will wind up with unsalted butter that you can store in a container in the fridge. I whipped 750ml of cream and it yielded 300 grams of butter. It doesn't take very much time (maybe 15 minutes) but I think it is cheaper than what the stores sell it for. Use organic cream and you will have some terrific stuff!

I was on the phone tonight with my mom, telling her what I had done, and she said that she remembers doing the same thing on the farm but they shook the cream in a jar. We are spoiled nowadays with Kitchen Aids and other gadgets. My sweet grandmother up above must be chuckling  :)

Butter is composed of three things: fat, milk solids, and water. To make clarified butter, which is pure fat, heat butter in a saucepan on low heat. Do not let it brown. As it melts, the milk solids float to the top, the fat lingers in the middle, and the water sinks to the bottom. Skim off the milk solids and pour out the fat through cheesecloth, leaving the water behind. Clarified butter is delicious to cook with and doesn't burn as easily. It has a higher smoke point, as it no longer contains the milk solids. It can be stored for a few months in the refrigerator without going rancid.

A cool tip is that you can even make butter out of cream that has gone off a bit. Just whip it up and discard the liquid as mentioned above. It is the milk solids and moisture that sours, not the fat molecules. You can take it a step further and clarify it. This is another way to salvage something instead of throwing it out.

Tagged as: [ basics butter clarified homemade howto recipes tips ]