Cupcake Pan Pointers

• When choosing a cupcake pan, shiny is better.  Shiny pans help to reflect heat better and result in more evenly baked cupcakes.

• Darker pans are OK, but you may want to lower cooking temperature by 25 degrees to achieve the best results with your cupcake recipes.

• Try to have at least 2 cupcake pans with 12 1/2 cup wells each.  This way you won't have to cool one pan down before you finish baking your cupcakes.

• If you only have one cupcake pan, refrigerate batter with plastic food wrap covering the batter.  Press the plastic wrap onto the top of the batter to make sure a skin doesn't form on the cupcake batter while refrigerated.  You will also have to cook the 2nd batch of cupcakes a little longer since the cupcake batter will be cooler.

• New pans made out of heat resistant silicone are also a good choice for baking cupcakes.  Clean up is extremely easy since you can just pop these pans right into your dishwasher.  They are very flexible so removing cupcakes when you don't use liners is also much easier.