Baker’s Edge in Ireland

One of the many interesting things about food blogging is tracing the movement of ideas and recipes around the widespread world of bloggers. Since the first time I read about Mark Bittman’s No-Knead Bread – currently on my (very long!) list of recipes to try – in the New York Times it has travelled far and wide. You’ll also find Peabody’s Cranberry Orange Cookies a-wandering around other people’s blogs, as is Donna Hay‘s Self Frosting Cupcake recipe, which first surfaced on Niki’s Baking Sheet and then moved out into the wider world.

The Baker’s Edge baking pan is one of those things that’s been wandering around the blogging world for the last while. My interest was piqued when it popped up on Chocolate and Zucchini last year. Beautifully photographed, as always, by Clotilde (she also has a savoury recipe here), I loved its curvy snake-like shape and was intrigued with the idea of a baking pan – it was originally designed for brownies – that was designed to distribute heat equally so that there wouldn’t be such a difference between edge and centre pieces. And then I promptly forgot about the Baker’s Edge – until it started cropping up other blogs. A few months later, I’ve become the proud owner of what may be the only Baker’s Edge in Ireland!

Solidly constructed from non-stick cast-aluminium, it came with a leaflet of recipes (cup measurements only) as well as a dinky little red spatula which helps to smooth cookie dough around the turns in the pan as well as being invaluable when it comes to dividing up brownies and getting them out of the dish. Unfortunately my Baker’s Edge has become a victim of our current peripatetic lifestyle. Living in Dublin during the week and the country cottage at weekends means that it, much like my digital camera, always seems to be in the wrong residence when I want to bake! I still don’t feel like I’ve given it a proper try-out but I have been experimenting with David Lebovitz’s Friendship Bars, trying to convert the ingredients for Chef Emily’s Signature Cookie Bars into metric and playing with a great recipe for Coconut Blondies (which is how I discovered the thermostat for my Dublin oven is screwy) that I got from the Connoisseur.

I’ll just warn any potential purchasers that if they, like me, have a fan oven – nothing else seems to exist in Ireland any more, come back NZ cooker, all is forgiven – to be extra careful when cooking in this pan as it is all too easy to overcook things. I’m fiddling around with a few different recipes at the moment and hope to post them soon. In the mean time, you can read about why the Baker’s Edge came about and creator Matt Griffin’s efforts to bring it into the market, and browse through some recipes here.