Don't you love it when someone thinks outside the box and comes up with uses for things beyond their original designated use? Take the muffin pan, for instance. Who knew it had so many lives.

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Using it as a cooling rack seems like a pretty straight-forward idea. Yet I would never have thought of this!

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And a very clever friend thought to cover the bottoms of each cup with paint and use the pan as a huge stamp. She made a dozen disposable card stock place mats for a party using this idea.

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I've seen folks shape tortillas by hanging them over the rungs of the baking racks in a hot oven, but using an upside down muffin tin for this purpose had never occurred to me.

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The muffin pan is also the tool to use when you want individual (rather than one large) pineapple upside down cakes!

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But how about THIS? Turn the pan upside down and use the spaces between the cups to bake a batch of your favorite pie crust (or even uncooked flour tortillas). Spray the spaces between the cups well with cooking spray, cut your dough or the tortillas into small rounds, and gently wedge them between the cups as pictured. Now you have small baked cups to hold your tart filling, guacamole (if using tortillas), etc.

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And then there's placing your pie crust directly over the upside down muffin cups. Spray them well with cooking spray, place small crust rounds over each cup, and bake. Small individual pie crusts are ready for your favorite dessert filling, limited only to your imagination.

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Finally, here's one I never would have thought of in a million years. Shape a stiff cookie dough around well-greased cups. The cook that came up with this idea filled the baked cookie cups with ice cream balls and topped it all off with hot fudge sauce. (From the picture we can see that she also chopped her chocolate chips into small pieces so the dough would hold together well.)

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What new use for a muffin pan can you come up with? These inspiring ideas have sparked my creative juices and I'm going to start looking at the tools and equipment in my kitchen differently now. Stay tuned-I may come up with some clever ideas too! Let us know if you do.