Reviewing For You: Freestanding Paper Baking Cups

Product: Freestanding paper baking cups.  Many companies sell them, and they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.  For this blog post, we used the muffin top baking cup that are sold through Jo Ann Fabric stores.

Claim to Fame: These new products are currently flooding the baking market right now with promises of perfect baked goods and no need for heavy and clunky bakeware taking up precious storage space.  For most cupcake wrappers, they need to be nestled into a cupcake tin to keep their shapes while they bake.  These baking cups can be baked on a simple cookie sheet.  And with dozens of sizes and designs, including a loaf pan and bunt cake, the baking possibilities just opened up!

Price: $ ($0 - $10) The price of these products ranges, depending on where you buy them and what you're buying.  Smaller cupcake baking cups may run $4-$5, while a package of bunt cake liners may run $8-$10. It sounds expensive considering you can buy 75 cupcake liners for $2, but it's sadly the trade off you have to make for a product like this.

Testing It Out: One of the worst mistakes we ever made in our early baking career was trying to make some no-bake cupcakes on a hot July day.  The cupcakes were fine...for the first 20 minutes or so.  As soon as they began to warm up even the slightest bit, they expanded the regular cupcake liners, eventually causing them to spill out all over the place.  It was seriously such a train wreck.  For our test, then, we decided to try these out with another round of no bake cupcakes...this time, though, we would try these new freestanding cups.

After we lined the bottom of each liner with some great cookie crust, we loaded it up with a cool peanut butter whipped topping and then then covered it all with some chocolate.  Into the fridge it went for an hour to set, then we pulled it out to see what the results were.

The Results: We are loving the results!  They just came out a few hours ago, so maybe we'll change our stance when we've had these for a day or two, but the shape is holding up wonderfully!  Instead of resembling a melted Popsicle, these looked like no-bake cupcakes.  Imagine that!!  

Final Verdict:  These performed spectacularly for us.  They held up just as promised, and we loved how painless they were to use.  A little expensive as far as cupcake liners are concerned, but for unusual circumstances (like no bake cupcakes) there's nothing better in our opinion

*As a note, we also did try to bake with these (yes, that meant turning on the dreaded over on an 87 degree day) and these are excellent if you need to stick it in the over too.  We simply put it on a cookie sheet, slid it into the over, and in 20 minutes had some amazing cupcakes to munch on.  If you need to bake with these too, they work wonders.

Rating: **** out of ***** The only downfall to these freestanding baking liners is the price.  These would be a perfect 5 out of 5 stars if the price was just a little lower.  Nevertheless, this is a great product, and we highly recommend them.  We hope they keep rolling out new sizes/designs/colors, because we might become big investors in these.