There are a few things I take for granted in my kitchen: things that do double duty, or stand-in in a pinch, and sometimes, even provide me with a superior alternative!

Burger papers are one of those things!  Yes, those little 5.25″ x 5.25″ square sheets of parchment that you can buy for next to nothing at the restaurant supply warehouse!  I always have a box in the pantry for everything from wrapping caramels, to providing a clean base for the top of my scale, to separating fresh baked goods so they don’t stick together, to yes … even the mundane task of separating burger patties!

One of the recent burger paper hacks I’ve been employing lately is as a stand-in for muffin papers. You can buy the standard muffin cups with the accordion edges, but you really need to shell out for the better quality ones to bake gluten-free muffins in — otherwise they stick like nobody’s business.  AND they look a little pedestrian and “homemade”.   More recently, the fancier tulip papers have come on the market and become more widely available, BUT if you are consuming a lot of muffins, the costs add up.  A few months back, it struck me that these were really nothing more than parchment squares folded up.  And so, the DIY parchment muffin cup was born from burger paper squares!

To make this dead easy, find a cup (I found these disposable plastic cups fit PERFECTLY in a standard muffin tin!), turn it upside-down, place 2 papers slightly offset (you need 2 papers to make a stable enough cup to contain the muffin and propel its doughy rise upwards in the oven) on top of the base of the cup, and simply gather the paper around the cup with your hands to fold and crease it into shape …

… VOILA! you have a muffin paper!  Simply place it in your muffin tin, fill with your favourite muffin batter, and bake away!  These are greaseproof, and non-stick, and peel very easily away from even the stickiest of gluten-free muffins!

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Janice

Janice Mansfield is a personal chef who specializes in creating customized catering and baking for people with food sensitivities. A recipe developer and baker by day, by night, she enjoys delving into the history of classic cocktails and created a line of cocktail bitters for no other reason than she wanted chocolate bitters in her Manhattans! In her spare time, she documents the antics and unbearable cuteness her two Shiba Inus over at Life in the Shiba Shack.

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