I really enjoy thinking creatively about kitchen utensils and gadgets. Commonplace devices often serve purposes beyond their intended usage, which greatly increases their value in comparison to one-trick devices you hardly ever use. Plus, being creative is just plain enjoyable.How to use Silicone Muffins cups?
Silicone muffin trays are one example. Yes, we know they can be used to make cupcakes and muffins. What other purposes, though, may they serve? They work well in the freezer, microwave, and oven. Moreover, you can clean them in a dishwasher. This implies that there are numerous options.
This article discusses the best use of silicone muffins, how you can make your silicone muffin cup to suit your preferred shape, and how safe silicone is for making tasty muffins.
How do Silicone Muffin Cups work?
Silicone muffin cups are made from silicone. In short, silicone is the raw material used for muffin cups. Traditionally, muffin cups are made from metals, such as aluminum, but lately, non-toxic and non-sticky silicone has also been used to produce muffin cups.
Since silicone muffin cups are more flexible than metal ones and take less time to remove burns, most bakers have converted to using them. Moreover, silicone muffin liners are primarily, though not exclusively, used in muffin baking. You can bake different pastries with them.
The toxic-free silicone cups fit neatly into your standard muffin baking tray, making them the perfect, environmentally-friendly alternative to paper cases and metals.
Furthermore, these muffin cups are a true game-changer for bakers thanks to their non-stick surface. To be clear, taking out baked or frozen muffins does not require any sort of juggling anymore. We can wave goodbye to cupcakes stuck on top and sobs from toddlers!
The best part is that you can easily clean your silicone muffin cups in the dishwasher once you have finished nibbling. You are rescuing lives!
How to care for your Silicone Muffin Cup
Before using your silicone muffin cup, there are certain things to do. They include:
- For the first use, you need to condition them by washing them in warm, soapy water and rinse them well.
- Coat the silicone muffin cup with vegetable oil or nonstick spray
- Preheat the oven according to the directions for the muffin recipe
- Adjust the oven rack so that it is sitting in the middle of the oven.
- To clean, load the muffin cups into the dishwasher or wash with your hand with warm and soapy water.
- Silicone muffins are flexible; you can turn the bakeware inside out easily, allowing you to clean them thoroughly. This cannot be done with other materials
- Do not use sharp objects to clean the muffin cups. Sharp objects will destroy the silicone’s non-stick surface, leading to scratches on the body. Scratching can also leach toxic chemicals into your food.
- After cleaning and drying the muffin cups. Stack the cups inside one another to store them.
- The silicone muffin cup should never be placed directly on a burner or hot plate.
Additional uses of Silicone Muffin Cups
Generally, there are other pastries you can make with silicone muffin cups besides baked muffins. Many common gadgets have uses beyond what they’re sold for, and this makes them much more valuable than those monofunctional gadgets that you seldom use.
Silicone muffin cups are a prime example of a multi-purpose substance. Certainly, we know they can be used for baking muffins and cupcakes. But does their use end there? Also, we know the FDA approved them to be oven, microwave, and freezer safe. And you can wash them in the dishwasher. That points out that there are a lot of possibilities.
Cups for Mise en Place
This is probably my favorite. Mise en place is French for “use every bowl you have to hold measured ingredients.” Or something like that. Okay, it really is about having everything measured, prepped, and ready to go before you start cooking. It makes cooking easier since you don’t have to stop and hunt for that jar of dried oregano in the middle of cooking. These cups are great for measuring out herbs, spices, salt, chopped garlic, and other ingredients.
Depending on what you’re prepping, you can stack these in order of use. Spices would be fine to stack, separated eggs wouldn’t work as well. Or, since most of the silicone muffin cup sets come in a variety of colors, you could group items based on color.
Spoon Rest
Spoon rests keep your counters clean when you’re cooking and stirring and then you need to find a place to set that spoon. But … but … when I’m cooking, I’m probably cooking more than one thing. I have the pasta, the sauce, and the vegetables. Or the potatoes, the vegetables, and the stew. Or the oatmeal and the … uh … oatmeal.
Sometimes I use a small plate and I can put two spoons on that. Or I just mess up the counter by leaving the spoon there.
Or, I could grab a couple silicone cups and use those as spoon rests. They don’t flatten completely, so you’ll probably want jumbo muffin cups for your bigger spoons. Standard muffin cups are fine for small spoons.
Snack Holder
Here, portion control is key. Rather than eating straight out of the bag, pour your afternoon snack into a regular cup. Heck, this cute little container fits in the dishwasher better than a plate, even if all you are snacking on is apples.
Melt Butter
Since silicone muffin cups are flexible, you should not fill them all the way to the top with liquid, but you can use the microwave to soften or melt small amounts of chocolate or butter.
Separate Eggs
Standard muffin cups are lovely and compact for simple activities like separating an egg or two, and you can use the giant cups if you need to separate a few more eggs. However, I always have to use bowls that are unreasonably enormous when I need to separate eggs.
Freeze Large Ice Cubes
Larger ice chunks float in a pitcher or punch bowl or appear much more intriguing in a glass. To make big cubes, you can purchase ice cube trays, but why not utilize your existing silicone muffin cups instead?
Freeze ice or juice in them to float in a pitcher of punch, sangria, or margaritas. You’ll want to have these sitting in a muffin pan or on a baking pan while they’re freezing, since the cups are flexible. When they’re full of water, they’d be hard to move around in your freezer. When they’re solid, just pop the ice out of the cups and drop them into your pitcher or punch bowl.
Hold Pots
These cups can be used to grip pot handles or the hot knob on a lid because silicone is an excellent insulator. These can be used to drag a pot off a stove and prevent your fingers from burning, though you might not want to hang on for too long or remove a cast iron pan that is scorching hot from the oven.
Regular muffin cups work well for protecting fingers or for holding round pot lids. Larger handles are slightly better protected by jumbo cups.
Unscrew Bottles
Use one of these to help remove the sticky ketchup bottle top when it becomes stuck since the silicone is gripping. Even though silicone is quite resilient, damage can nonetheless occur. You might want to use less-than-beautiful muffin cups that you might not use for serving tough treatments like this.
Gelatin Molds
Prepare individual portions of gelatin and remove them to serve. These might also be used to form chocolates, Rice Krispie treats, barks, and brittles, among other delicacies. You could freeze some of your homemade ice cream in these cups and then unmold it to serve. Little muffin cups, which may accommodate just more than a tablespoon, are ideal for one-bite desserts.
To make the savory side, fill the cups approximately halfway with polenta and refrigerate. To serve, you can remove them once they have set and brown all sides.
Freeze Herbs and Fruits
Many people may freeze cubes in an ice cube tray after blending herbs with olive oil. These cups work the same way, and if you fill regular or jumbo cups with a few tablespoons at a time, you can stack a number of them for freezing. The frozen disks can then be easily removed from the cups and placed into a freezer bag.
If you frequently prepare smoothies, you might freeze the fruit in these cups with a little water or juice, then remove the fruit from the cups and store them in the freezer in a plastic bag. When it is time to produce smoothies, simply select one or more fruits and mix away, taking care that the cubes you are creating do not fit within your blender too much.
Cook Eggs
Pour in a cup of marinara, canned chopped tomatoes, or your preferred salsa, top with an egg, and bake until the yolks are cooked but still runny and the whites are set. These could be used for poaching as well. Place the egg cups into a frying pan with some simmering water in it, cover, and cook over low heat until the eggs are as firm as desired.
It is true that you can use a microwave to cook scrambled eggs. While scrambling is OK, you would not want an entire yolk to explode in the microwave. Cook, stirring, for 30 seconds at a time.
Butter the muffin cups beforehand (or spritz with olive oil) to ensure the eggs slide out of the cup easily while poaching or scrambling; otherwise, you may have some egg stickage. While it is not bad, it is not quite good enough for a presentation worthy of a picture.
Peel Garlic
Do you recall those silicone garlic peeling tubes? An identical task can be accomplished with a silicone muffin cup. Simply place a clove of garlic in the middle of the cup and roll it between your hands or on the counter.
Conclusion
With proper care, you can use the muffin cup over and over again. Silicone muffin cups are a good alternative for baking your muffins. The non-stick surface allows you to bake and clean the silicone with no stress. In case of an emergency, the time left will enable you to bake. You can always do the cleaning later, and guess what? Soaking the muffin cups in warm water removes all the stains.