Best Route to Cakes Not Sticking?

[NotQuiteCockney]

I tried butter and flour today and was pleasantly surprised. Does it always work well? Do you have to use loads of butter and loads of flour? Is oil as good as butter, or should it always be saturated fat?

I know that lining the tins with paper is best, but I find the cutting etc quite tiresome, they always move while I'm filling the tins, and the edges of the cake don't come up nice and crispy.

I used to work in a bakery and we used butter and flour, cakes never stuck (now I use non-stick pans plus butter and flour just to make sure )

what do you mean 'butter and flour'? wipe round with butter and then dust with flour? sorry for being so dense (not unlike my baking).

I use the butter paper, peel it off the butter, quick wipe round the pan. Put a tablespoon of flour in pan and gently shake it so it covers all of pan, base and sides, then tip out excess flour.

okay. i do save my butter papers and tend to use them, but i didn't know about the flour. thanks, that's great.

Or for a more extravagent approach you can buy cake tin liners from Lakeland - good for fruit cakes. I normally use one of their bases rather than lining the whole thing, very lazy I know, but then always easy to get out with a knife run round the edge if necessary.

i use the liners at the moment, actually, but i would like my fruit cakes to come out a little dryer on the outside as i like the crust bit best.
i consider them essential for a lemon drizzle, however...

Ah, I thought professional baking probably involved butter and flour, as it produced a really nice crust.

So it does have to be butter, or shortening, not oil?

When I did it yesterday, I was probably using too much butter, as it was a bit lumpy, and the flour stuck a lot. I'll try using less. (They're non-stick pans, too, but it wasn't a very high-fat cake, and it was full of fresh fruit, so more likely to stick? I think?)

silicon bakeware!!

I brush tins with oil and put a disc or square of baking parchment or greaseproof paper in the bottom of the tin. You then grease the paper too.

If baking a rich fruit cake (wedding, Christmas, etc) then I line the bottom of the tin with a layer of brown paper, then greaseproof on the bottom and sides, then tie brown paper round the outside and place a piece on the top as well. That way you don't get any burning on the outside of the cake.

glad you had cake joy yesterday!

I normally grease with a butter wrapper if I happen to have one to hand, or wipe round with oily kitchen roll if I don't.
I only flour if the recipe actually specifies (lazy), ditto lining with paper.
The trick to stop the paper moving about as you fill the tin is to grease the pan first, then the paper sticks to the butter. And silicony baking parchment (try Bake-o-Glide or Waitrose own brand) is much better than greaseproof paper if you can lay your hands on it.

I'm like MrsB - I only flour if it says so, only line if it says so and then usually only base and I have those base liners from Lakeland. But I do double line my Christmas cake.

Ah, I'd wondered why they said to grease the tin first!

I do have Waitrose own-brand paper - baking parchment? Something like that. It is good, it does stop things sticking, but it doesn't give a hard crust, so I've gone off it.

The recipes I work from are always American, and hence say "spray with non-stick coating" or some such. I don't really know what that stuff is, and I'm not a fan of aerosol products, so that's not an option.

But I suspect "worthy" cakes, which are relatively low in fat, and high in veg/fruit are more likely to stick.

its been said before but

silicon bakeware!

Never fails! Never!

(I made mars's lemon drizzle cake and forgot to add the butter and yet it turned out delcious thanks to....SILICON BAKEWARE!)

oh and can't you just bung a bit of oil in an atomiser and spray it on? Like those things you water plants with?

NQC, you are turning into a domestic goddess.

Lakeland (them again) sell this stuff but I haven't used it, no idea what's in it.

Here you go - this gives you the ingredients in Cake Release if you scroll down.

Fillyjonk, cod said her silicon bakewear melted! That put me off it a bit.

And yeah, I saw that stuff in the Lakeland catalog, and said, hey, wait, if they say this fancy stuff is as good as butter + flour, then maybe I should be using butter + flour! (Probably not their intent.)

Bran, I was quite embarassed at how much that orange cake stuck to the tin, so was eager to try another way!

I have bought loose-bottomed cake tins, too, though, which should help with the problem.

Hmm, those ingredients are a bit scary. Granted, I wouldn't use much, but butter + flour still sounds like the way forward here ...

Buy them from Tescos

Or the local bakery if you are not supermarket inclined

Works for me every time

i grease with butter, dust with flour & then a sprinkling of caster sugar. no sticking here

have you tried these also from Lakeland ? I find the cutting out a bit of a faff too and these are great

melted?

How completely strange.

I do not see how it could melt. The melting point of silicon is around 1500. Which is quite a bit hotter than even gas mark 9!

um...its never melted for me and i have a wide range of silicon bakeware. Unless her oven is connected to a power generator, I think cod is having you on.

have looked at those ingredients. hydrgoenated veg fat! No!

Get yourself a nice silicon cake tin, you will not regret it. I will persoanally send you a tenner if it melts...