Product review: silicone muffin papers

I really like muffins a lot. They give me a great way to use up leftover fruits (or zucchini), they make a quick and portable breakfast for Man, and a perfect snack for Princess' school snack. I've been on a huge muffin kick lately cranking out zucchini muffins, banana muffins, and tried for the first time "put the lime in the coconut muffins" which were surprisingly delicious even though I used regular lime juice rather than key lime. I really didn't like muffins papers because I hated keeping them on hand and how they seem to take half the muffin with them, but I also really didn't like having to scrub out nonstick muffin pans if I left them bare, so I thought that silicone muffin cups would be the ideal solution. They are free standing so I could get rid of my muffin pans and just put them on cookie sheets, they can go from the freezer to the oven without sustaining damage, it'd be easy to stack them with water inside each cup so they could soak for easy cleaning, and I wouldn't have to use cooking spray which would make my muffins marginally healthier.

Nice idea. It turns out that while they are free standing, I never did use them for freezing, they were extremely difficult to clean, and I had to use cooking spray in them anyway or half the muffin would be get left behind when it came time to demold them. Oh, well.

My other options include stone ware muffin pans or just making 8x8" cakes and cutting. I like the versatility of muffins and the textures you can get from specialty muffins like those coconut ones or peach cobbler muffins. There is also the benefit of getting more upper crust into the bargain which is especially great if you're doing something like a streusel muffin.

It's also easier to portion out the goods if the kids aren't cutting their own pieces from a cake. Although, this morning I found that Pebbles had discovered the cooling rack with the coconut muffins and wasted no time in grabbing one per hand and taking a bite out of each, heedless of the muffin papers I've started using again. Oh, well. [insert fiber joke here] Haha!!