Question: Can you use aluminum foil to help the cake from sticking to the pan?

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Answered by Joyce P.

You should never use foil to line the cake pan, nor can you use wax paper or freezer paper. Being a cake decorator, I have found that using parchment to line the pans gives excellent results. Apply a thin coating of shortening or butter (margarine is not recommended because it has a higher water content), then line only the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. Then grease and flour the parchment and sides of the pan as you normally would, including non-stick pans. Peel the parchment from the bottom of the cake as soon as you remove it from the pan. The cake will not stick and will release from the pan beautifully. But do not line the sides of the pan.

You can buy parchment paper on rolls (just as you can foil, wax paper, etc.) and cut it to fit the bottom of the pan, but I prefer to buy the pre-cut parchment, which comes in a large variety of sizes for round cake pans.

Parchment paper is also excellent for baking cookies. You don't have to grease the cookie sheet (or the parchment), and you can quickly have another batch ready to go into the oven since the cookie sheet needs no clean up of crumbs between batches. You can also reuse the same sheet of parchment paper for 2 or 3 batches of cookies.

Perfect tips just before the Christmas holiday!