Spooky Skeleton Cakelet Pan

I just made boxed brownies in the pan today and they came out great! I sprayed Pam and used a plastic bristle brush to get into all the nooks and crannies. Poured 1 box of bownie mix into 2 pans. It fit perfectly and I got 8 skeletons. I baked for 20 minutes and out came the best brownies I’ve ever tasted. They were chewy on the edges and cakey on the inside. I sprinkled powdered sugar on them and the skeletons became more defined, and appropriately spooky.
My kids were thrilled to behold them and to eat them. Great! Great! Great!!!

This pan is a good, sturdy baking pan with a fun design for Halloween. It has a non-stick finish, but still calls for some traditional pre-baking treatment. The instructions from the manufacturer (included with the pan), indicate to brush with either butter or shortening, then dust with either flour or cocoa powder. Alternatively, one may use a baking spray containing flour. However, a non-floured baking spray is not recommended.

I tried this pan using both of the recommended prep methods, and I cannot recommend the first suggested method (brushing with fat or oil, then dusting with flour or cocoa.) That may be perfectly fine for a normally-shaped baking pan, but is not really useful for the skeleton pan, which is very heavily detailed. It is very difficult to get the oil or fat really down into all the details of this particular pan, and if you do, you are guaranteed to get too much oil or butter into some parts, while still perhaps not having enough in others. When I used this method, the cakelets didn’t want to come out of the pan, and broke into pieces when I finally got them all out. (I then had to scrub the pan with a soft toothbrush to get enough of the remaining cake crumbs out before I sprayed and poured the next batch of batter in.) I suspect the usage instructions may be generic instructions that come with all Nordic Ware pans, and are not really appropriate for a baking pan with this level of detail.

On the other hand, when I used Baker’s Joy cooking spray, the cakelets popped right out of the pan with little effort, so I strongly recommend just using a flour-containing baking spray, and you will have no problems getting the cakelets out of this pan.

Also, I tested this pan using a thicker-than-average cake mix (almost like a brownie batter) I had to kind of work at getting the batter distributed well in the skeleton moulds, and the cake came out a fairly coarse in texture, which didn’t show off the details of the skeleton designs quite as well as I had hoped. Based on my results, I would recommend using these with a more traditional-style cake batter. I suspect a finer-textured cake would better show off the details of the skeleton design.

Overall, I give this pan four stars. The pan is of the high quality that I expect from Nordic Ware, but I knocked off one star due to the inclusion of baking prep instructions which I feel are not appropriate to this particular pan. If you just use Baker’s Joy spray, I think you will be pleased with the spooky results you will get from this pan. I look forward to decorating and serving these spooky skeletons!