In December I went to visit some family in Victoria, BC. Located in that area is SweetArt Supplies, which carries an abundance of baking stuff. Everything from cup cake liners to lollipop sticks to cookie cutter to colours. You name it, they have it. I came to the store because of push pops (another story to review) because you can’t get them in Canada that easily and US shipping will kill you.
Anyway, I visit them and was warmly greeted by Gwen who is running the show. I think we spend several hours talking about baking, supplies and life in general. Besides push pops I took Batter Babies home (look here for recipe/review) and these liners that Gwen gave to me. What better way to use them than to make Guinness Brownies with them?
First, I thought they are a bit big and, well, round. If you think of your average brownie they are square and sort of smaller. The base is about 7.5cm in diameter and the liner is 2 cm high, which will give you a nice sized brownie. They are easy to handle and because of the large base they are stable on the cookie sheet.
So I whipped up a batch of Guinness Brownies with no butter but a load of black beans, and Guinness of course. The batter was fairly workable, a nice combination between runny and more solid. (If you know the word for the consistency I am talking about, please leave a comment.) Filling the liners posed to problem and handling was fairly easy.
What I noticed though, do not overfill your cookie sheet. I made that mistake and some of my brownies had dents. That’s of course not the fault of the brownie liner. Because they cookie sheet was too full they hugged each other somewhat, resulting in not quite round brownies. On the other hand, you can use that as advantage by forming them into egg shapes for example. Egg shaped brownies for Easter, how cool is that?
Baking went well and they kept they colour nicely. The liner comes off the brownies really nice as well, which tells you the quality of the paper is good. I had liners before that were just terrible and would stuck to cupcakes and muffins terribly. I had one batch were the liners didn’t come off so easily, it was the lower rack batch, a darker, maybe slightly burned underside of the brownies. That’s tough on every liner so I won’t place blame there.
I really like the Brownie liners, the portion they yield is great and not too much. I had those brownies for a meeting and people went for seconds, so my initial worry about the size was not necessary.
If you wish to obtain those nice liners go to SweetArt Supplies and search for brownies. They will pop up right away and are available in brown with white swirls or light yellow with brown swirls. A package will give you 50 liners for the price of $6.00 CAD (tax probably not included). While you are at it, browse the content, I bet you will find something you love.
Also, go over to Facebook and like her page. She posts useful tips and recipe links or just funny stuff that will make your day. She also has a blog, click here to get there, where she uploads her personal recipes. And of course there is also a Pinterest page, which you can find here.
Happy Baking!
Baking in Saskatoon 