Hot topic for discussion: cupcake liners

I don't know about you, but it's only been recently that I decided using pretty cupcake liners was worth spending the extra money for it. Maybe it coincides with taking cake decorating classes? But I have to REALLY like the paper to buy it in the first place.

Before, I would use whatever was available at the grocery store. I believe I've always gone the Reynolds route. The pastel variety because at least there was some color involved. I once used the foil variety when I wanted to dress it up a bit. I wanted to give you my background to let you know where I'm coming from. The Reynolds cupcake liners are dependable. I never had a problem with the liner sticking to the cupcake or muffin, except for this one time when I made vegan muffins.

Last year, because they were on sale or on clearance, I bought some Wilton cupcake liners. Looking at their site now, I see that they're no long available. They were a bright green version of the Celebration Baking Cups. I also bought plain white Wilton baking cups too. And just before I started the cake decorating classes, I bought Wall-E ones that were on clearance.

So far, using the Reynolds and Wilton brands have yielded comparable results.

The last day of cake decorating class, I decided to buy a bunch of cute cupcake liners. Some were Wilton brand and the others were...??? Specifically, I'm referring to these polka-dot cupcake liners. I did get them from a local store, but they were generically packaged and didn't have a manufacturing label attached. The other polka-dot cupcake liners on Bake It Pretty are described as "high-quality Swedish greaseproof paper" which I would say applies to these as well. They do feel like a heavier stock of paper and they are certainly greaseproof. The other side effect? If you're not using it with a sticky batter, the papers peel off on their own.

I noticed this with the last few batches of cupcakes and muffins I've made. If the cake/muffin is especially moist and kept in an air-tight container, if the cupcake liner stuck on through the first day, they most certainly didn't stay stuck by the second day. This isn't a huge deal except 1) It's not visually pleasing, and 2) I don't want people to think that the cupcake/muffin was almost eaten by someone else (hence, the peeling of the paper) and then returned to inventory. This is something I think I'll have to play around with to figure out.

Those polka-dot liners were a lifesaver for the mint-filled  brownie cupcakes that I made the other day. The first batch of liners I used were the normal variety. I didn't think the batter would be sticky, but removing the cupcake liners was horrible. I ended up just removing the liners for the whole batch to make serving them easier (especially at work!). With the remaining batter, I decided to use the polka-dot liners to put their peeling abilities to the test. Sure enough, they peeled off easily.

I'll have to do a test with the cupcake liners that Michelle gave me, just to make I know which ones to use for what baked good I'm preparing.