A New Discovery

I made a new discovery the other day while I was shopping at Wal-Mart for my pies to bake for Thanksgiving. I was there getting the pumpkin, sugar, flour, etc. and there I saw a roll of parchment paper. I thought "hmmmm....I wonder how well this stuff really works." Let me tell you, it works! I used it to bake the raspberry thumb print cookies. The paper made it so there was very little clean up. I cannot believe that in the tens of dozens of cookies that I've made, no one (and that includes my mother) ever told me about parchment paper. I haven't done a lot of baking in the last few years, not because I haven't wanted to, or because I have two little ones. It is merely because I didn't want to have to deal with cleaning up the cookie sheets. Well, all of that is about to change.

I made about 5 dozen cookies for my dad today (I promised him I would make him some of my cookies when I was at "home" over Labor Day, but it never happened). From start to finish (including clean up) was 1 1/2 hours. That was with Owen "helping" me, answering the phone, putting Caroline down for a nap, etc. I couldn't believe how quick it was.

It was only that quick because I used the parchment paper. I didn't have to wait for the cookie sheets to cool down in order to scoop out the next batch of cookies to go into the oven. I scooped them right out onto the parchment paper while the sheets were in the oven. When the sheets came out, on went the next batch and into the oven. It was awesome! Then when all was said and done, I slid the last batch off the sheets and poof! NO DIRTY COOKIE SHEETS TO CLEAN UP! Wad up the paper and throw it away. Can't get that much easier for clean up.

I think I will definitely be baking more, especially since I have discovered parchment paper, a discovery I wish someone would have told me about long ago.