Ok, I need baking help and you ladies are the experts. I have recently ventured into baking little tarts (in a mini muffin pan) cookie crumb crusts (gingersnap, vanilla wafer, etc). I am using recipes primarily calling for crushed cookie crumbs and melted butter. I am putting the mix into the mini tins and squashing into a tart shape then baking. After removing from the oven, I have to completely reshape. Then the tarts shells have to be left to cool because otherwise they will crumble. Ok, so then the problem I am having is if I left them cool sufficiently, I basically have to use a knife (I use my rounded end icing spreader) to "hack" them out. I am losing much of one side on at least 1/2 of them, and scratching the non-stick coating off my pans with the other 1/2 of them. HELP! How can I bake these without ruining the shells...or my pans???

Thanks in advance!!

Are you spraying your pans ?? I do even if they are non stick. And maybe you need more butter in your recipe ?

you know one time on a cooking show I think it was Paula Deen...I saw her make little tarts with the mini muffin pan and she used the OTHER side of the pan....she filled her mini muffin pans (spraying liberally) with the crumb mixture and then used another mini muffin pan, sprayed the UNDER side of that pan and pushed it into the first pan pressing the crumbs down tightly (it also helped distribute the crumbs up the sides some too) then she flipped them over while holding them together and gave it a bang on the counter and removed the top pan leaving her with what looked like little mini pie shells on the back side of her pan. Then she baked them. she said they were easier to get off of the pan than OUT of the pan. Maybe you could try that if you have two mini muffin pans??

Khalsted, what an interesting idea. Might be able to try that. I have two pans, but they aren't exactly the same size (the cups are, just not the pans). I haven't sprayed the tins because it seemed unnecessary given the huge amount of butter I was using (and recipe didn't say to)...would it really make a difference??

Bump! Anyone else have any ideas?

I think so..........even though it has a lot of butter, it can still stick and obviously it is based on the experience you're having.......trying spraying the pans and test one or two, if that doesn't work then try to reverse the pan

For cookie crumbs crusts I put some sugar in, then melted butter till I can easily form a ball with the crust. I would certainly use some form of pan release. You could try to put them in the fridge after they cool. This will stiffen the butter in the crust.

Mike

Try something like this ..

http://www.pastrychef.com/MINI-CHEESECAKE-PAN_p_12-1240.html