For those who didn’t already know, I spent the last 8 weeks back in Austin. We got our stuff out of storage and promptly re-packed it for an international move. We sold the car, we’re in the process of selling the house, our stuff is (hopefully) on a boat on its way to Cambridge, and we arrived back in Cambridge on Wednesday.
While in the US I agreed to do several product and book reviews, so I’ll be posting those over the next week or so, all well in time for your Black Friday shopping needs while I relax in the UK and instead of coping with Black Friday or Thanksgiving will get to have an actual birthday dinner without being run over by crazed shoppers or holiday goers. Yay!
When back in Austin, we ate a lot of Trader Joe’s stuff including their cornbread mix, plus a lot of Hebrew National All Beef hot dogs, because neither of those brands are available here in the UK. Robin in particular has become a major fan of both hot dogs and, as she calls it, “CORN BLEH!”
So today for the girls’ lunch I tried this Hip2Save recipe for pseudo corn dogs in the form of hot dogs stuck into corn muffins. My mini muffin tin is on the boat, but I have two regular muffin pans here in my UK kitchen; one is old, inherited from the folks we bought our furniture from when we first got over here, and the other is newer but has already been used many times for high-heat applications like the Yorkshire puddings my husband will be making again for dinner tonight.
Because he needed that muffin tin tonight and because my breakfast muffins have already been sticking to both pans something awful, and because the UK does not seem to have the flour-in-the-spray type cans, I decided I needed to do something to make these cornbread muffins today without having them stick in a jackhammer-required mess.
I googled for homemade flour spray and found this I Am Baker post about Goop. It’s basically equal parts flour, shortening, and vegetable oil. The shortening we have in the UK is called Trex which is slightly different than US shortening (and sadly not at all like a T-Rex which would be awesome), but I gave it a go anyway. I made up a batch of a half cup of each ingredient and used my rapidly-disintegrating pastry brush to spread it around the muffin tin (I meant to bring some of my good ones back on the plane, as I did with some spatulas and a ladle, but the guy packing my kitchen got to the pastry brushes before I did so now I have to wait for the boat).
Here is the short form review of Goop:
ZOMG THIS STUFF IS SO AMAZING.
This is life changing stuff, people.
The slightly longer review is as follows:
With something as sticky as cornbread, I expected at the very least to have to use a silicone spatula to scrape them out and leave a layer in the pan.
NOPE.
Check this out…here’s the pan of cornbread muffins (some with hot dogs stuck in for Peo, some with hot dogs cut up for Robin):
Recipe from Hip2Save here, cooked a bit longer for the larger pans. Pretty tasty although I think the sugar can be cut in half next time. I didn’t have buttermilk so I used a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice in semi-skimmed (1%) milk. I used basic Aldi frankfurters which are okay, but not as good as Hebrew National All Beefs, sigh.
And here’s what happened when I merely nudged one of the muffins with my fingers:
THAT SUCKER JUST ROTATED AND FLIPPED. No sticking, no tearing, nothing.
WOW.
Better still, when I went to wash the pan the Goop remnants washed off easily, not all tarry like flour/canola spray.
If I was still in the US, I would never buy flour spray again. Goop blows all sprays out of the water, off the field, and straight into outer space never to be seen again. It’s a fraction of the cost, it only takes a short time more to spread it around (it’s faster than greasing and flouring), and it works so much better than anything else other than perhaps parchment paper. I’ll probably still use parchment paper for larger cakes for stability when removing from the pans, but for all muffins, smaller loaves, etc, I will now only use Goop.
Try it. You’ll be amazed.
