Pops De Milk

Yesterday our shipment of bakeware from The Pampered Chef arrived. To say that Jay and I were excited would be an understatement. We squealed and giggled as we gently pulled out a rectangle stoneware baking sheet, muffin pan, stoneware loaf pan, and spring form cake pan.

About ten years ago I purchased a square stoneware baking pan from The Pampered Chef. It was my absolute favourite pan until yesterday when we welcomed the new additions. If you’ve never baked with stoneware, I strongly suggest you do as these baking pans and sheets absorb the heat and distribute it for even baking. What I also love about this product is that because you only wash it with hot water (no soap) after several uses it begins to form a somewhat greasy coating. After a while the baking pan doesn’t need to be greased prior to baking.

Once we had our bakeware out on the kitchen table I decided to immediately make use of at least one item. I chose the baking sheet to make Halloween-themed sugar cookies. The recipe comes from Joy of Baking and I recommend watching the video for some tips on making the cookies.

I baked one batch on the baking stone and one batch on my non-stick baking sheet using a Silpat. The cookies on the stone were baked to near perfection while some of the cookies on the other sheet came out half burnt on the bottom. Some were golden and some not so much. The recipe, by the way, is awesome. I left my cookies sans icing sugar as they are subtly sweet on their own.

Of course I couldn’t just stop there. We have a basket-sized amount of apples on our counter, which I’ve been wanting to use for a pie but I still haven’t replaced my broken pie plate. Luckily The Pampered Chef products each came with recipes and one of them was for Apple Oat Muffins. The recipe can be found here. Not only were the muffins fast and easy to make but they turned out amazing. The sweet cinnamon crumble on top gives each bite a little spicy crunch and the apple bits lend their natural sweetness to the mix.